


The Stolen Ones

by Potboy



Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: (not sexual things), (physical harm and violence only), Canon Typical Violence, Gen, Pining, and bad things happening to children, infinite original characters, just an awful lot of pining, you probably need to watch out for that, young darth maul is not darth maul yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 72,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6657307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soon after Qui-Gon Jinn is forced to kill his darkside padawan, Xanatos, and without time to process grief or failure, he finds himself pressured into taking on Obi-Wan Kenobi as his new student. Obi-Wan is annoyed that he didn't do it earlier and more willingly. This doesn't make for a great master/padawan relationship, but they're working at it.</p>
<p>Meanwhile someone is kidnapping the force sensitive children who were not found soon enough to be brought to the Jedi temple and who are therefore now considered too old to be trained as Jedi. What does this mysterious power want of them? And is there anyone in the galaxy who cares?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a very long time ago, when Star Wars: TPM was newly out and I had only just read the first three or four of the Jedi Apprentice books. I was very indignant at a lot of the assumptions that series made, so I started to write my own. Sadly 15 chapters in I got seized with enthusiasm for Pirates of the Caribbean and never finished this. I don't think I ever will, now, but I wanted it to be available again for completeness' sake.
> 
> You really don't realize how your writing has developed until you read something from the ancient past. It's interesting. I clearly had no idea how to do punctuation in those days.

Qui-Gon Jinn blocked the stroke a fraction too late - impact jarring through arm and shoulder. Bright blades spat and thrummed so close to his skin that he could feel their focused power like a brand. Even now, though he could hear his opponent breathing, he couldn't see the face.

_Who is he?_

He foot-swept, trying to hook the other's legs out from under him, pushing at the same time. The move should have sent the brown-cloaked man staggering backwards, giving Qui-Gon an opening of a few seconds, to power in and disarm him. Instead, with an easy surge of the Force, the man leapt vertically, turned in the air - cloak in a flurry of dark wings around him - twisted, and came down behind Qui-Gon with a fluid cut of the blue blade that would have severed Qui-Gon's neck had he not blocked again, panting.

His legs were trembling now from fatigue. Breathing had become a hot ache across his back.

_Enough!_

Twisting the block, he brought the other's arm down, held it straight, extended. Then with all his strength he smacked the open palm of his left hand into his opponent's locked elbow. Bone cracked with a snap.

The unknown man cried out with pain, his grip on the lightsabre loosening - the blade flicked out and back. He fumbled it into the other hand, and as he did so Qui-Gon kicked out - a stamping kick to the knee.

The joint shattered. The man sagged. Qui-Gon thrust a hand into the shadowy hood, caught him by the hair, pushing the head back as he forced the blade of his lightsabre through skin and ribs, up into the heart.

Crumpling, slumping backwards, the man pulled Qui-Gon with him. The hood fell away. And it was Obi-Wan; Obi-Wan's blue eyes losing focus, his face astonished at death, his body going limp under Qui-Gon's hands.

Qui-Gon recoiled, dropping the warm corpse, lightsabre falling from his grasp. Horror tore into him like a spear of ice.

_I killed my apprentice!_

 

* * *

He woke, gasping, chilled. It was a long moment before he could nerve himself to sit up and look across the darkness of the cabin to where the boy lay sprawled in his bunk, fast asleep. Hard to see, in the faint blue and red lights of the door-panel, whether he was breathing. Qui-Gon watched, to make sure, filled with the physical certainty that he had killed him.

Under the scrutiny Obi-Wan frowned in his sleep, turned, pulling the cover over his face. When he had settled Qui-Gon got up quietly, picked up his boots and belt, and padded out to the empty bridge.

Smudgy streaks of hyperspace went past silently in the twilight. The computer, responding to his presence, began to switch on lights.

"No. Leave them off."

So, he wondered, was that a premonition, or just guilt? After all he had killed one apprentice already, hounded him across the galaxy, watched him die in scalding agony in an acid pit on Telos.

New every day, the pain rose up, overwhelming him - _Xanatos_ \- and the morning began with a struggle to breathe.

He knelt, composing himself for meditation. _I accept the pain. I accept the grief..._ Let them come.

He knew from experience that in time even this would fade, would be reshaped into a source of wisdom. He would keep the good memories and discard the bad, in time. In time he would think of his lost child and smile. But not yet. Here, now, the hurt was still like a sword-blade thrust through his chest. He had to fight not to double over, head in hands, and weep.

Why in the name of the Force had he taken on Obi-Wan Kenobi? _Why did Xanatos turn to the dark side? Was the fault in him, or in me? And if in me...how can I stop it all happening again? How can I stop the dream from coming true?_

The hyperdrive whine deepened, slowed. There was a moment of suspension, half way between two dimensions, and then the universe gelled into place. Darkness filled the viewscreen - a point of green light intense in the centre, a tiny, pale crescent to its right, the rim's sparse stars scattered grudgingly at the edges.

Time to work. He lifted everything away - emotions, questions - reaching for the Jedi calm. Was it slightly easier to attain than yesterday? Perhaps.

The pilot came whistling down the corridor, lights flicking on before her. Seeing Qui-Gon she stopped, her round, scrubbed face taking on a look of uncomfortable reverence.

"Oh, you're meditating. I can come back in a couple minutes."

"No. I've done."

"Well, the approach is a bit tricky - so many wrecked satellites. If it's OK?" She dropped into her chair, engaged engines. Bursts of fire chased themselves across the view as the shields burnt up debris.

Obi-Wan ran onto the bridge, his spiky hair still tousled and a faint look of accusation on his face. "You said you'd work through the morning meditation with me."

"I did, didn't I." The planet, Nimgon, had expanded to fill the screen, jade colored. A satellite loomed and went past; a hulk of metal, spinning furiously. The green sun's light flashed from blown-in windows, sensor arrays, the jagged edges of empty gun stations. "It'll have to be tomorrow. Go and get ready to disembark."

 

* * *

"I have spoken to the emissaries from the Beta Systems," Qui-Gon folded his hands inside the sleeves of his robe and looked out of the high window of the Ambassador's office. "And I can tell that they are sincere in this offer of peace."

From here he could see over the Embassy gardens to the massive outer wall and beyond it dust and purple flickers of light like hurrying stars. Nimgoni security forces were putting down the latest food riot outside. The whining of the guard's stunpoles trembled up through the fabric of the building, into his bones. "You should bring yourself to trust them. What have you left to lose?"

"We trusted the Beta Systems when we signed the treaty of Pta, and they broke that within five days." said Nam Gillet, the Nimgoni ambassador. He was avoiding the view, but his color was pallid, and the tips of his tentacles twitched on the floor.

Qui-Gon turned to face him, amused despite everything; "That was two centuries ago. Things have changed."

"What, exactly? Their nature doesn't change."

"The Republic wasn't asked to mediate the Treaty of Pta. This time we will be there to make sure they obey the terms. Be confident; you have learned from your mistake."

In the aftermath of his dream the words tasted hollow. _Who am I to tell him that?_ he thought, looking over to the droid niche in which his Padawan stood, impeccably silent and attentive. _What have I learned from mine, except to be afraid?_

"I'm not sure if I can risk it." said Nam Gillet, and slithered with a sound of suction towards the drinks cabinet. Outside, sirens screamed; the blaze of pulse-rifles joined the stunners for a brief, searing instant. Then there was silence.

"You can't risk it? You can't risk peace?" Qui-Gon stopped before he said too much. The sounds of distant death had filled him with anger and frustration. He had to breathe the emotions away before he could go on.

In the tiny pause Obi-Wan stepped forward, young face glowing with righteousness. "He can't risk angering the pro-war lobby. He can't risk his own precious political career!"

"Obi-Wan!" The sound of his disapproval made the boy stiffen, hurt, but Gillet's skin color shifted from ash to orange, broadcasting pleasure that the young Jedi had been rebuked over his honor.

This was not the message Qui-Gon intended to give either of them. "Obi-Wan," he said pointedly, "Your perceptions may be accurate, but your tact leaves a lot to be desired. When you're speaking the truth do it with courtesy. It's heard better that way."

"Yes, Master. Sorry." the apprentice drew back into his corner again, smiling.

"Why do you insist on bringing a child into these negotiations?" said Nam Gillet irritably - the barb had obviously struck home - "He should be out playing."

"He's not..." Qui-Gon began, and it struck him - like a serpent lunging out of hiding - a ripple of dark force, the piercing knowledge of something evil nearby.

Obi-Wan muffled an outcry. He tore the lightsabre from his belt, powering up.

"Now what?" Gillet snapped, his skin whey colored in the light of the blue blade.

"My apologies, ambassador, we must..." The sense of present evil had grounded itself, threading into the building like a spun carbon cable, connecting with something. It had found victims; Qui-Gon could feel it breaking open a mind, playing with what it found. The sense of violation, of drowning in vileness, rose up like a scream for help.

It was close. One? No, two floors down. In the guest quarters. He closed his eyes, concentrating...

"Master?"

"Quiet!"

The evil thing warped the shining smoothness of the Force like a Black Hole. He had never felt such power. Touching it was like touching damnation, and trying to fight it with his mind was like trying to hold a lit candle in a tornado. It brushed him away, contemptuously.

As it did so he felt the presence of a second victim, not compelled this time, only terrified.

_Very well then,_ he thought, overwhelmed with urgency, _We'll do this the boy's way._ and he ran for the door.

Once even the corridors of this building had been sheathed in sheet coral. Only fragments had been left unsold. They rattled as he passed, and firefly reflections of the lit sabre glinted along the walls as Obi-Wan followed him.

"Power that thing down." Qui-Gon called over his shoulder. Desperation was clutching at his throat, the sense that no matter how fast he ran he would arrive too late. "What if someone comes out of one of these doors when you're going past?"

The blade snap-hissed into silence. They raced out into the empty light and echo of the massive stairwell. Twenty five meters across, thirty down to the level from which the mental voices rose, pleading. He had begun to taste their pain on the Force like the copper tang of blood.

The boy skidded to a halt beside him.

"Over there," Qui-Gon said, pointing, "Can you jump?"

Obi-Wan looked down - all the thousands of meters to the remote ground, where a shallow ornamental pond lay like a sheet of steel in the centre of the green marble floor. Qui-Gon felt the boy's spirit quail.

"It's really that urgent? I haven't felt anything change..."

So he felt the attacker, but not the victims. Good, Qui-Gon thought, given the brutality of what he was picking up, it was good that the boy was spared that. "It's really that urgent."

"I'll try."

"'There is no try.'"

"I'll do it."

He made himself stop and explain - even though the delay was a torment; "Be calm. Remember that with the Force there is no difference between this and a single step."

_And if you fall, I'll be there to catch you._ he added silently, and lept.

The boy followed, using the Force with grim determination, clearing the fatal gap easily and slamming hard into the wall on the other side. Strength was not his problem, Qui-Gon noted, only finesse. The feat deserved some praise, even if - and it felt as though it was - the universe was ending around them. "Well done." he said, "We'll work on your control later."

These walls had also been stripped. Bare permacrete amplified the beating of their hurrying feet. Then a new sound tore along the frigid passage; it started sweet, like birdsong, shrilled, and rose beyond human hearing. Dust stirred around their feet as the vibrations of the scream rolled over them.

He reached the door behind which the nightmares lurked - _Quickly!_ \- touched the controls, awareness of dark power crawling even over the metal and glass. It was unlocked.

He swung it open. A stench of blood spilled out - Nimgoni blood, thin and black. Evil, like a physical pressure on his chest, held him pinned for a moment, aghast. _Calm. Be calm._

Something was moving in the corner of the room, making a scrabbling noise, ugly as the sound of a mynock on a ship's hull. Hard to see what it was; the windows had been blanked out. In the centre of the floor a bundle - the wrong shape for human or Nimgoni - rocked and whimpered. He stepped forward, and his foot landed on a severed tentacle. There were more, pale in the gloom, but the body-mass of the maimed Nimgoni was still alive, whining with pain.

A tendril of dark power touched his mind, like a nosing maggot. He slapped it away, but not before he got the flavor of it; satisfaction, as though an interesting experiment had come off well.

Going down on his knees in the pool of blood he touched the Nimgoni's face - fine skin frayed all over with cuts. Its death was tangible; life draining away second by second. Astonishing that it was still even partly conscious.

In the corner the scrabbling thing raised its head; a young human - one of the clerks from the Beta systems. Cuts from his own fingernails bloodied his eyes, and madness seethed behind them. Qui-Gon could feel the pulse of danger there; knew an attack was coming soon.

Like a cathedral of ghosts animated by one controlling mind, the dark power watched him, pondering its next move.

From the doorway he could sense Obi-Wan; impatient, expecting him to challenge this unholy invader and drive it away.

But if he reacted to any of those things the Nimgoni would die.

Forgetting - with an effort - that there was a madman in the room, forgetting the maelstrom of evil in which he knelt, he reached out for the Force. Sinking deep into meditation, he called the energy to return here; the wounded body to heal. The Nimgoni's spirit clutched weakly at his mind, like imploring hands.

Then the human screamed, lunging out of his corner, vibroblade humming in his hand. Qui-Gon saw the stroke coming down; wild, inept, but very fast. He held the Nimgoni back from death by only moments, and his grip was tenuous on the retreating soul. Panic stabbed him; _Will I lose it if I move?._

And suddenly Obi-Wan was under the blow - catching the wrist, twisting, following through the motion with a throw; a classic Temple move. The man went down heavily and Obi-Wan pulled the arm straight, bent back the hand and plucked the weapon out of his grip. Then he stepped back - again a relic of training, that little sporting pause which allowed the opponent to recover - and stood looking blank, as though astonished that the technique actually worked.

_I must remember I'm not on my own any more._ Qui-Gon thought ruefully; he had wasted time and effort with his moment of panic. He went back to the healing, trusting his safety to the boy.

But now the Darkness had seen what was important to him. Pettily it moved to spoil his work. If he concentrated on one wound, willing it to heal, it opened another. Each time he found his focus it broke it. Playing with him. He felt as though he was kneeling at a cliff's edge, trying to pull a friend from the abyss, while someone bent his fingers back one by one. It was increasingly difficult not to become angry.

_Very well,_ he thought, _This matters to me. What matters to you?_ Fear was the core of the Dark Side. One could not become a dark-side adept without being eaten up by fear. Perhaps he could bluff it?

"The longer you stay." he said aloud, hoping it heard, "The more I'll know you, and the easier it will be for me to lead my Order straight to you. Is that what you want?"

He felt its amusement - as a man might feel when threatened by an ant - and then, suddenly as it had come, it was gone. The universe was clean again, and the Force poured itself into his hands with all its astonishing glory. He lifted the Nimgoni back from the edge and made it sleep.

"What is this?" Nam Gillet's voice spoke from the doorway, flutelike and incapable of inflection. Qui-Gon had to open his eyes to see that the ambassador's color was the ice-blue of horror. "That's Cim Beysan! What have you done to him?"

"Us!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, his bruised face lit with indignation, the madman crouched sobbing at his feet, "Nothing! Well, except..."

"Gods of the Deep! Is this how the Jedi solve disputes? By murder?"

"Ambassador," Qui-Gon got to his feet a little unsteadily - healing was exhausting work, "You are overwrought. Obi-Wan, call for the medics, please."

"Medics!" Gillet's molten-gold eyes flared as he opened his inner eyelids with anger, "I have called the guards! I'm going to have you..."

"Not them!" The knife-man raised his head from the floor, his voice thick with tears, "It was me. It was me...I'm so sorry."

Qui-Gon could place him now; Ibhis LoXin, a minor aide to the Capra Beta party, unimportant, inexperienced, and very young. So many wounds here, and only the physical ones were easy to heal. When he reached out to touch Ibhis' shoulder reassuringly the lad cringed away, like a slave in a Hutt pleasure dome.

"You did nothing." Qui-Gon said firmly, "I won't let you be blamed for this. You're as much a victim as he is."

"No!" Ibhis raised his sticky palms into the light, "The blood is on my hands. I know what I did. I want to be punished!"

"And you will be." Nam Gillet said, guards slithering around him, surging into the room. Tentacles whipped and snapped. "You will be."

 

* * *

Curtains of pared silverice shimmered with a noise like falling water, separating the oppressive grandeur of the Embassy ballroom from its elegant gardens. Inside, the guests had formed into two silent camps, keeping an eye on each other as they ate the rather sparse buffet.

Qui-Gon frowned as he watched them. The mental effort of keeping their hostility down was making his head ache, but it was probably the only thing at this stage which could save the treaty. Calm, and time - to let them remember how desperately both sides needed peace.

A breeze brought the sharp, citrus scent of madderley in from the balcony. He needed time himself - to think - so he brushed aside the silverice and went out into the evening. The sky was tangerine, slashed with pale emerald clouds, satellites winking green as glow-worms in the sunset's depths.

"What was it?" Obi-Wan asked, following him like a mismatched shadow. The bruise on his face had blackened and grown defined; the shape of a boot heel.

_He fought a hard battle to defend me._ Qui-Gon thought, resigning himself to the company, although he had wanted just a brief moment alone. _And I haven't thanked him._

"What did you feel?" he asked.

The boy looked taken aback that his opinion was being sought, but composed himself quickly, "I felt that the thing, whatever it was, was important. Not just big, or powerful, but important." He struggled for more words, but couldn't find them. "I'm sorry."

All the aptitude tests Qui-Gon had read indicated that his new apprentice's gifts were centred in the Cosmic Force: He sensed changes to the galaxy, the onset of the future. He did not sense small things. Therefore, Qui-Gon sighed, this was not a small problem, or a threat localized only to this mission.

"Yes," he said, slowly, thinking it out as he spoke, "That's more or less what I felt too. The attacker itself was one individual - I'm certain of that - but augmented by..." an appropriate description was hard to find; "By a chorus of power that came from outside it. Some kind of Force storage device, maybe. If such things are possible. I can't tell whether it's the individual, or the device which throws echoes into the future. Perhaps it's both."

The sky darkened, the moon X'zim rose, poised like a falling boulder over their heads. Security lamps lit, bathing the gardens in an aquamarine glow.

"Master?"

"Hm?"

"You could have the treaty signed tomorrow if you mind-tricked them into it. Then we could go after this dark force. Why not?"

"Apart from the fact that, once it got out, no senator would ever let a Jedi near him again?" Qui-Gon sighed, paced over to the balcony steps. He could see, over the flowers with their slicing perfume, the white tops of the high walls. Behind them, discretely hidden, lay the refugee camps, the packing crate villages, the strafed out, wasted fields.

"People know when they're being coerced." he said, grimly, "There's no surer way to ruin anything than to force it; the resentment pushes it apart from within. You end up with smaller pieces and bigger grudges than before.

Besides, what gives us the right to make puppets of others? In duress - threat or great urgency - yes. But in honest negotiation? Never."

The breeze blew the yammering of pulse-weapons into the garden. Another riot? Or one gang robbing another of its food? Grief and anger beat down on him at the thought - he wanted to make it better now. If only he could bend a few minds. Make them stop hesitating, and act.

"Obi-Wan, I want you to sit in on the first round of talks for me. Observe, drop a hint here and there, if the demands are unfair or excessive. Steer the topic away from the attack and keep it on the peace."

The boy stirred, pulled at his new braid angrily. "You could get a droid to do that. I want to help with the important stuff."

As though he hadn't heard the gun-shots at all.

"Getting this treaty signed is important. People are dying."

"Sitting around all day listening to other people arguing? What's that going to teach me?"

"Politics. Patience. Obi-Wan, this is what the Jedi are about; finding and maintaining a just peace. It's not glamourous and it is boring, but until you've learned to do it you will have learned nothing."

Obi-Wan stepped forward, a light blue-hot behind his eyes, his face far more adult now it was tightened with anger. He opened his mouth to speak and some thought or habit of obedience stopped him with the accusation unmade. Turning away he began to pull petals from the indigo and gold madderley vines as he breathed down resentment with obvious effort.

_What has he got to resent from me?_ Qui-Gon thought with a flare of answering anger, _He's the one who pushed his way into my life uninvited, because no-one else would have him._

For a moment the evening was full of heat. Then he noticed the anger and challenged it; _He could have pushed for eternity, I didn't have to yield. It's not his fault that I never can resist a lost cause._ The thought was unfair - on both of them - but its affect was good. He smiled.

The boy looked up at the same time; "So what are you going to do?"

"I need to talk to Ibhis. He was in contact with this..." he shrugged at the inadequacy of the description, "This 'Force-nexus' intimately for some time. He may have learned something useful."

He leaned on the balcony rail, looking down to the aviary under the vines, where Nimgon's scarf-like gliders twisted in dim evening colors behind once-gilded bars. "I also want to make sure he's not lynched. I promised to protect him."

Obi-Wan went back to picking apart the flowers, frowning in a way that made his silent protest painfully clear.

"You have something to say about that?"

He straightened, looked up challengingly; "They already don't believe you about the possession." he said. "They think you're helping Ibhis just because he's human. By defending him you're losing credibility as a mediator, and without that the chances are that the peace treaty will fail. Then they'll execute him anyway."

Qui-Gon rather admired the boldness of this analysis. It certainly was one possible outcome - even a probable one. "You've thought it through well. What do you suggest?"

Now the gaze dropped back to the litter of petals - sword-shaped, the color of obsidian in the growing darkness.

_But he can't face me with this._

"Ibhis even wants to be punished. I think...I think we shouldn't interfere. The mission's our priority, isn't it?"

He had known it was bad before it came, but this took his breath away. Perhaps it wasn't quite as appalling as the boy's recent offer to ambush and murder Jemba the Hutt in the cause of worker's rights. But he had rather been hoping that would prove to be a fluke.

"Let me get this clear. You're suggesting I let them kill an innocent man - a man we both know to be innocent - just to make the mission easier?"

"No!" Obi-Wan glared at him, as if he was deliberately misrepresenting everything, "To make peace come soon, instead of not at all."

"Peace without justice is oppression."

"But he's just one person. Every day he delays the peace a million other people die. That's got to make a difference."

_Cosmic-force Jedi!_ Qui-Gon thought with a familiar sinking feeling, _Why do they always think by numbers?_

"No," he said, "There are no quantities with the Force; just as a step is the same as an abyss, so an injustice done to one man is an injustice done to the whole universe. They are the same."

Shouting made the pared silverice shiver sweetly across the doorway. The music of Nimgoni anger answered strident human voices inside the ballroom.

"I don't see that." Obi-Wan said at last, "If you have the choice between one life and a million you take the million. You must."

How could he phrase it and be understood? "We are Jedi. It's our business to find the third choice; the choice that preserves both."

"And if you can't?"

"Then you've failed. But not to look for it in the first place is more than failure - it's betrayal."

The sky was darkening. Plumes of smoke, dirt-colored, drifted up from the refugee camps, scattering the bruised light of the speeding moon. Hostility spilled from the embassy like another dirty cloud, but it could not quite overshadow the resentment his apprentice still carried, tight and secret in his heart.

_Should I deal with that now?_ Qui-Gon thought, reluctantly. _No. There's no time for it. Tomorrow, perhaps._

"Let's get back to work." he said and motioned the boy to go inside. In the doorway, poised between the hatred and the calm night, he paused for a second, to review what they had;

_A peace-treaty in crisis. An unknown enemy of incredible power. A Master who dreams of killing his apprentice and an apprentice with an unspecified grudge and no morals._ The humor of the situation struck him at once; _I'm not even going to wonder how it could get worse!_

He smiled, and shouldered aside the curtain, returning to the fray.


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't know what happened." Ibhis raised a tear-stained face into the half-light of his underground cell. The scratches from forehead to chin had become infected and flamed a vivid red against his pallor. "I tell you I don't know!"

"Forgive me." Qui-Gon had been provided with a chair, and an armed escort. He left them both to kneel beside the criminal on the floor. "If I could leave it at that I would, but what happened to you may not be the end of this. It may simply be the beginning."

This close he could feel the young man's shame and terror like a forcefield, and knew it would burn him if he touched it. He tried to make himself smaller, non-threatening, but it didn't work, Ibhis only squeezed himself further into his corner and hugged his knees as if they could, somehow, protect him.

Qui-Gon had seen all these symptoms before. He backed off, found the guards. "Please leave."

They turned yellow, both of them, like a splash of Coruscant sunlight against the stained brown walls. "We can't leave you in here with a murderer."

"You don't think I can defend myself against an unarmed child?"

Uncertainty coloured them like flowers. He waited, as they spoke together in their own language - rapid shifts of pattern and colour over their whole bodies; long spaces of time when he couldn't tell if they had gone black, or if they still conversed in marvellous shades of ultraviolet he would never be able to see.

The Force told him they were suspicious of his motives, afraid for him, and of him.

"But we will watch on vid."

"Of course. I have no secrets."

Ibhis watched them go with an increase in terror, as if Qui-Gon had withdrawn a protection from him. _It's me!_ he realised, surprised. He had thought the guards' aggression and their blasters were contributing to the young man's nervousness, but no, _It's me._

"Why are you afraid of me? I want to help." _And I'm the only one who does._

Ibhis' long hair was tied in thousands of braids, thin as a Padawan's. Each braid bore many bloodstained silver beads, tiny as stars. He toyed with them now, avoiding Qui-Gon's eyes. "You did it. Didn't you."

"I did what?"

Terror flared into weak anger - the words trembled with unshed tears. "Someone broke into my head, tore my mind apart, made me see...." He swallowed, thin face grim, "And we all know about the Jedi and their mind tricks. Was it you? You had some kind of plan, maybe, and you used me?"

Indignation pushed words into his mouth 'What do you think I am!' but he didn't say them. He sat down on the floor, slowly. After all, given what Ibhis knew, the conclusion was reasonable enough.

"I'm not saying that I couldn't have done it, and other Jedi could do it far easier than I." The desire to give comfort was too strong for him this time, he reached out, tried to touch, to make some kind of reassuring contact. Again Ibhis cringed away, broken and scarred, an object lesson in why this kind of defence was always a last resort. "But none of us would."

He sighed, accepting his own helplessness and going on, "I know I can give you no evidence for that. I can only ask you to trust me."

When the questioning glance came, he caught it, "It wasn't me. Please let me help you."

Ibhis turned his hands over again - they had not let him wash, and black blood still clotted the nail-cut palms. "If you wanted to help me you should have come sooner. You, with your training! You should have gotten it off me before I..."

Like the voice of his conscience. _Yes, I should have come sooner._ But he caught the thought with discipline - there was nothing but pain down that road. He would not go there, would not trap himself, as Ibhis had, in endless cycles of blame and remorse. "We each did what we did, and now we must deal with it. If I can't help you, perhaps you can help me."

He expected a dull 'I can't do anything,' and was impressed when the youth straightened, sniffed the tears back. "How?"

"Tell me what you experienced - what you saw, felt, everything."

"There were monsters." How old was he, Qui-Gon wondered. With his face blank in memory and his voice trembling he looked barely older than Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan who had gone to his meeting this morning wearing duty like a cloak of lead. _I hope he hasn't said anything too inflammatory yet._

"They chased me, and I was so scared." Ibhis was, Qui-Gon remembered, a translator, and he had an awkward eloquence as he began to explain; "Do you know, when you're young, you lie in the dark in your room and you know - you just know - the monsters are there. Next moment you'll see them and their faces will annihilate you. Just looking at them will be more terror than you can withstand."

He turned his head, leaned his infected cuts against the dirty wall, his voice small and calm. "You know they're going to do things to you that you can't imagine, but that's not the worst - the worst is just seeing them. Like their faces could violate your soul. Only when you're little you're always in that moment just before. It always never quite happens."

He stopped, swallowed, and Qui-Gon, who had never felt this fear, still knew what he was going to say next. "This time it happened. I saw them."

The hands, which had relaxed slightly, balled up as he tugged his knees in closer. "I tried to make them go away. I fought.... And then it all went away and I found I was a murderer."

The hands again, pushed out, aggressive, showing the stains. "Look at me. I'll never be clean again."

Force! That was a familiar pain. He remembered his own first kill, rehearsed the familiar, inadequate excuses - _I was nine years old! He was trying to...._ But it was no good, he could not shake the sense that something infinitely valuable had been forever lost. What could he say? 'You never will be clean, but you can learn to live with the dirt'? He cleared his throat.

"Cim Beysan is not dead," he said, gently, "Even his limbs will regrow in time. You're not a murderer."

"I feel so ashamed!"

I'm sure you fought the nightmare with all your strength."

Ibhis face crumpled once more. "But I didn't win!"

He remembered saying this to Xan once; Xan, young and furious over his own weakness, furious that he had failed the master whom at one time he had loved. _No. I won't go down that road either._

"Ibhis, there's always someone stronger than you - there's always a bigger fish. If you fight against evil, the occasional defeat is inevitable. That's not shameful. In fact it's a triumph to have fought at all."

The young translator looked away, refusing comfort, clinging stubbornly to his injury. Qui-Gon sighed. "You weren't aware of being compelled? Of someone else, directing your actions?"

"No. They were my own monsters."

It was rare to find such massive power in harness with subtlety. Whoever was behind this was invisible even to his victims. Troubling, but the only piece of information Ibhis seemed able to give.

"Master Jinn?" Ibhis actually volunteering a communication? Qui-Gon looked up with hope.

"I didn't ask you to be my champion. Why can't you just leave me to be punished? It's what I want."

Sympathy exhausted itself in the face of this craving for martyrdom. He could not force the young idiot to be healed. "I'm not doing this for you," he said, perhaps a little more harshly than he had intended, "But for me. I don't want your innocent blood on my hands. Or on the treaty."

He rapped on the door, waited for the guards to unlock it. "I know you understand that. Understand this too - there comes a point where despair is just selfishness. You should ask yourself if you've reached that point."

Perhaps the reprimand would help, he thought as he climbed the endless stairs back to ground level, more likely it would not. It had been unworthy of him, sparked by irritation and the contagion of Ibhis' misery, but there, it was done and couldn't be taken back. Next time he would do better. 

* * *

He stepped out into the gardens and felt the slow, cool lives of the plants like a soothing balm. The slight breeze was pleasant and the green sun warm on his face. Letting the anger go, he breathed in scents of distant water, hringbell flowers nodding in grass, and madderley, pervasive as light.

Obi-Wan was standing by the lake, skipping stones. As soon as he sensed Qui-Gon's presence he dropped the handful of pebbles and wiped his hand guiltily on his cloak, ashamed to be caught doing something so frivolous.

It was nice to see him - nice to see someone who didn't think they were to blame for anything. "Report."

Obi-Wan drew himself up, folded his hands formally, just as if he was reporting to the Council. _Why must he try so hard? Is he still trying to make up for what happened on Melida/Daan? Does he really think I'm that remorseless?_

"It wasn't a very productive meeting." Even the language was carefully chosen to impress. It filled Qui-Gon with frustration, made him want to shake the boy until he did something _real_. Instead he stooped to pick up the discarded stones, turned away to send them slapping over the lake. Watching the shudders and circles of light he heard Obi-Wan sigh - a tight sound, full of confusion.

_I'm not incomprehensible, Obi-Wan - I'm just not what you expected._

A moment later the boy abandoned his polish for the truth, "Actually it was rubbish."

"In what way?" He held out the handful of muddy pebbles to his apprentice, smiled, hoping to share something innocent before he had to go back and talk about war. Hoping too that Obi-Wan would see this as an invitation to relax a little, to let up on his impossible quest to be the best Padawan who ever lived. _I don't want perfection, I want you to be who you are._

Obi-Wan took one, but he took it as if it was a test, grimly, determined to pass.

"There was a lot of posturing. A lot of 'we won't negotiate with murderers like you'." He skipped the stone, and it wrote 'anger' all over the surface of the water. "Several Nimgoni accused you of taking sides, and the Beta Systems clerks were embarrassingly nice to me in front of everyone."

He bared his teeth as he hurled the last stone. It raised one heavy splash and then sank, and he seemed to take that as an admission of failure.

Qui-Gon hunkered down to wash his hands in the lake. "But you managed to get them to talk about the treaty in the end."

"The last sticking point, apart from Nam Gillet's political cowardice, seems to be the shared moon - DraZim."

There were white animals in the water. At first he thought they were snakes, but as they came closer he could see the sleek hair, tiny paddle feet. Aquatic mammals. They nudged at his fingers, and he waited to see if they would bite.

"It's strategically important for both sides, but there's only enough land for one." Obi-Wan's voice lost some of its colourless accuracy, a hint of curiosity flavouring the tone. "There are seas. Both sides have technology to build underwater, but...."

"But the seas are sacred to the Nimgoni. They won't live underwater, and they can't permit their enemies to do so either."

One of the serpent-like creatures had hooked its forepaw over his thumb. He kept still, aware of the huge step of faith it was making, aware too of the crunch of shingle behind him which told him Obi-Wan was coming to look.

It crawled up into his palm, then cast itself in a loop around his arm, claws snagging on the rough-woven sleeve. Opening a pink mouth, fringed with teeth, it made a comical croak, and stared at him with eyes like silver mirrors. Its grip was surprisingly warm, surprisingly strong.

"What is it?" Obi-Wan knelt down beside him, allowing himself to be enchanted, like the child he still was.

"I don't know." He risked a light stroke - the fur already drying in the breeze - and it preened in response. "It wasn't in the briefing, so I'm guessing it's not dangerous."

"Or it's dangerous in some way we're going to be the first to discover."

The joke was a blessing. If Obi-Wan could joke in his presence then there was some hope for them after all. He shifted position so that Obi-Wan could do what he was obviously itching to do - get the animal to come to him - and thanked the Force for this brief moment when they were not at odds.

_Give me time, Obi-Wan. I just need time and space to heal._

It didn't like being told to go somewhere it hadn't chosen. Twisting, snakelike, in the boy's hands it hissed at him. He let it go quickly, and they watched it swim off, while Qui-Gon wondered whose dignity was ruffled most - the Jedi or the beast.

He offered up a failure of his own to soothe it: "My meeting was fairly rubbish too. Ibhis knew nothing."

Ripples whispered on the shore. Noon smelled of algae, soil and far off smoke. "What are we going to do now?" Obi-Wan asked, sure there must be a plan.

"We're going to wait."

Obi-Wan looked up, eyes sharp and blue as his lightsabre. "That's all?"

Always trying to push things to move faster than they could. "Obi-Wan," he sighed, "The Force is like that little animal. It's not tame. You have to make yourself available to it, wait for it. At the right moment it will come to your hand, and with it you will change the universe. Try to hurry and it'll just run away."

He could see the message hadn't got through. Perhaps because it wasn't what the boy wanted to hear. He wanted to go striding out into the galaxy and bend everything until it fitted how he thought it should be. _That's unfair. You were young once too._

He recast the idea for his apprentice's more practical mind. "When you don't know what you're facing and you don't know what to do, it's not the best time to act. We're going to wait until the situation becomes clearer."

A silence, filled with something heavy. Obi-Wan was nerving himself to say something. The peace between them was slipping through his fingers like water.

"You weren't there when I looked for you this morning."

With that one sentence Obi-Wan placed them back in the world of failure and accusation. "I don't know if I'm doing the meditation right - I'm not getting anything out of it. You said...."

"I'm sorry." What was it that drove him to his feet, made him feel claustrophobic, pressured beyond endurance whenever Obi-Wan started down that road? He didn't know, but he would have to find out. He would have to face it, and soon, before it ruined everything. _As soon as this mission is ended. As soon as I can._

"We should go in for lunch. I'll talk to you about it later."

 

* * *

Something had changed during the morning, but not for the better. Yesterday there had been humans working among the Nimgoni - representatives of the capital's large human settlements. Loyal citizens of the planet, Nimgoni in their hearts, now those humans sat apart, ostracised by everyone. _This has to stop!_

The reception had exhausted all attempts at grandeur. Today battered droids moved among a mismatched assortment of tables, and the food was Pel-grain and protein cubes. There was a resentful feeling in the air, as if everyone knew this couldn't go on, but no-one wanted to face it.

On the edge of the human contingent was a scratched wooden table with two place settings, the only chairs unoccupied in the room. It was the first thing he'd found genuinely amusing all morning.

"Obi-Wan, grab your food, go sit with the Nimgoni humans. I'm going to talk to Nam Gillet again." Half in jest, half in earnest - Obi-Wan had a tendency to sarcasm; "Be pleasant."

The boy moved to obey, walking out of the light of the garden into darkness. People got up, moved to let him pass, faces polite. Nimgoni tentacles waved formal greeting, acknowledging him without hostility. And terror - stupid, irrational terror - grabbed Qui-Gon like a draigon's jaws, shook him.

"No!" he shouted, ignoring the turned heads, the looks of shock, "Obi-Wan come back. Quickly!"

This time it was like a tidal wave. Salty, stinking, a wave of blood, it came crashing invisibly through the room. Faces twisted, eyes full of shadows turning on them.

Diplomats began to pull apart chairs to make splintered clubs. Nam Gillet wrenched the arm off a droid.

Obi-Wan was hurled backwards, rolled, came to his feet, rubbing his neck. A line of sucker marks stood out black on his throat. "What's...?"

Politicians, clerks, ambassadors shuffled forward like an army of zombies. Qui-Gon breathed out shaky relief. Thank the Force, it's us they want and not each other.

Obi-Wan had the hilt of his lightsabre in his hand, unkindled. Qui-Gon grabbed the wrist "If you harm any of these people it could cause a war. We can't defend ourselves."

"Well what...?"

He turned the boy, pushed him through the door, shoved him forward, hand in his back. "Run, Obi-Wan. Get away."

Still the boy dithered "What about you?"

"No discussion. Get moving!" _Gods! Let me protect you this once!_

Surely there must be something he could do. He concentrated, but he couldn't break the compulsion on one victim without another going under. He picked up three of the tables with the Force, used them to gently push the army back. Just to buy some time, to let Obi-Wan get well away.

Like fighting a tidal wave. Dark force plucked the things from his grasp, sent them hurtling at his face. When he dodged they hit the ground and exploded, shrapnel and splinters showered him, showered the crowd that was now only a step away.

 _I hope you're fast, Obi-Wan._ He turned and ran, and a howl went up from a thousand throats behind him as the hunt began.

 

* * *

 

"I'm going to haunt you, Qui-Gon." The ground was black and the sky grey. Black dust was falling like snow. Xanatos stood on the lip of a pit, and the breeze, acrid with the smell of acid, whipped his long hair across his face, striped it with shadows. He was grinning, teeth glistening in a rictus of triumph. "You killed my father and you ruined me. Now I'm going to eat you out from inside, Qui-Gon. Live with that!"

There was a hatred Qui-Gon had felt once in his childhood - a glory of rage and power. He had held it in check ever since. Now he let it go. He dropped his lightsabre and ran. Shoulder strike to Xan's chest, the jolt pleasant as he followed it through with a back fist across the bastard's face. Xan fell, and the boiling acid closed over him. Qui-Gon stood looking down with satisfaction until the last of the black hair dissolved.

_NO!_

Something stirred, behind him. Shapes, just beyond vision, scraped and slithered. His danger sense screamed at him that there were monsters out there, and he had just killed his Padawan.

_No._

Thinking was like trying to lift worlds out of orbit. He struggled for calm, mind slowly forming words. _That's not how it was. I wanted to save him._

He saw the dropped lightsabre. A common motif in his dreams, but in real life it had never happened. Now, as he always did in the dreams, he leant down, and picked it up again. It felt like a picked bone, cold tendons and grease sending shivers of disgust up his arm.

_Something is in my head._

The monsters were almost visible now. The pressure to believe in them drew at him, like the gravity well of a star. _Wouldn't it be ironic if they were real. But I can't deal with them until I have my mind to myself. First things first._

The vision of Xan had hurt him more than he cared to think about. It was heavy on him as he knelt, composed himself, and began to pry the long tendrils of nightmare out of his mind. Uncanny, the way they had found all those places in his soul where he really didn't want to go.

With the Force, like a medical laser, he cauterised each infected spot. As he did so his sight cleared. He was terrified to look, in case he had struck down some innocent in his madness, but now there was no pit or body, only the greenish dust of an empty street leading out into the salt plain and far away, beneath the hills, a silent city of tombs.

 _I should be there._ An insight came like a gift from the Force.

Then a stone smacked into his face, making his concentration waver and the fear pounce; _If this is happening to me, what has happened to the ambassadors? And Obi-Wan?_

He remembered the hunt - losing them in the rubble and bombed-out houses at the edge of the city. When the immediate danger was over he had tried to track the dark influence, to find its source. He had touched it, and been overwhelmed.

Remembering the dreams was a pain he didn't need. If he lost concentration...

Again, a stone gouged his arm. Flint from the ruined houses peppered the night, flying at him, sharp edged. Force-pushing them away made his grip on reality waver and the blackness press back down, prying at his mind's defences.

 _What's happened to Obi-Wan?_ Useless, to everyone, focusing on that thought now. Fear would have him jumping at nightmares of his own making, wear him down, make him miss the moment to act. And Obi-Wan was not exactly defenceless; he could survive alone.

 _Against this?_ While it was useless to worry, it was another struggle not to.

He breathed out the anxiety, abandoning it in order to think. Behind this dark power he had sensed a single controlling mind. How many places could it be, how many people could it control if one was fighting back? Perhaps, if he was sufficient trouble, he might draw its attention away from the ambassadors, away from his Padawan, focus it all on himself. Perhaps he could make it personal?

He got up, and began to run out into the empty plain towards the place where he was meant to be.

With the rhythm of his footsteps as an aid to meditation he reached out, not to the centre of the dark power - implacable as a Black Hole on the landscape of the Force - but to the very edges, where the dirty tentacles of its influence were thinnest. They were vile to touch and there were millions of them, but he began to snap them one by one.

Close enough to be visible even in daytime, X'zim, the shapeless moon came up. Even as he watched it shouldered its way across the heavens, brown shadows and lights shrinking and lengthening as it passed - one of many rapid circuits.

The salt flat took its color like a bruise. Ahead, the cold shapes of Nimgoni tombs began to define themselves against the sky; massive shapes of pallid marble behind a low transparisteel wall.

His diplomatic briefing had included a section on the necropolis; '"The white mausoleums of Nimgoni nobility make a splendid sight when viewed from the air. However, Nimgoni priests have bred semi-sentient guardians, ferocious and cunning, to protect their revered ancestors from tomb-robbers. On no account enter this area on foot."'

But that was where the Force told him he should be. _Of course,_ he thought wryly, _I should have known when I read it that I'd end up there._ He had become familiar with the Force's brand of humour over the years.

The barrage of flint eased off. Smooth underfoot, salt crunched at each step - the loudest sound in the night. A change was coming; he felt the darkness paused and consider, dissatisfied, frustrated. He allowed himself a moment's satisfaction; _I have annoyed it._

Then its attack redoubled. Salt came up in a tornado around him, its sharp crystals grating across exposed skin, driven into nose and mouth. Each intake of air became full of a million needles. Warnings of danger clamoured in a Babel of nonsense through his body, making his hands shake with adrenaline.

Impossible as it was to tell which was real and which was false, the sensation was worse than having no danger sense at all. The pressure of evil was like a vice tightening around his heart.

He stopped, began the 'arch of peace' meditation, took the breathing mask out of his belt and fitted it, tugging his hood down to protect his eyes, and flung out the thought like a challenge; _Is that the best you can do?_

He was just chiding himself for overconfidence when the first gravestone came barrelling out of the storm of salt and slammed into his chest.

Agony tore through him - ribs had broken, pushing in, the ends knifing through a lung. As he fell, curled up over the scorching pain, he knew that his enemy had given up trying to control him. It wanted him dead. Even through the sensation of blood pooling in his throat he felt relieved. Now he had its full attention, the others should be free.

A maelstrom of white stone thrust through the veil of circling salt. Massive boulders, driven like racing speeders through the air, accelerated towards him, bounced off the Force shield he was holding around himself. It was hard to watch them recoil and not to think of the huge weight, the impact.

 _There is no difference between these and the weight of a single leaf._ Strange how implausible the lessons became in a situation like this. In an effort not to become desperate he repeated his master's words to himself "Size matters not." _I could move these with a breath._

Except that breathing was a torture he wasn't sure he could endure much longer. Nausea swept over him, and a grey light prickled behind his eyes. The world receded. _I must not go into shock!_

How long his attacker could carry on he didn't know. Certainly longer than he could. Time for a decisive move - or death. Stilling everything, abandoning any defence, he focused the Force like a beam of light into the darkness. He was going to see who he fought.

There was a sense of surprise, and retreat over vast distances, through tunnels where reality dislocated as it did in hyperspace. Then the face began to take shape; shadows showing in the solid blackness. _I will know who you are._

And it was gone, quickly as a flipped switch, the deep purposeful vileness which had formed its core disappearing in an instant. The edges faded. As he touched the unravelling tendrils the sense was the same as he'd once had in a Hutt torture chamber - the psychic residues of countless ugly deaths.

Pain was the beacon which brought him back to his own body - lying sprawled like a sacrifice in the centre of a ring of fallen monoliths. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his lightsabre - _I must find Obi-Wan_ \- tried to stand, and shock felled him like a blaster bolt to the head.


	3. Chapter 3

> > _Have the nightmares finished?_ Obi-Wan Kenobi wondered to himself, _This place can't be real, surely?_
>> 
>> He was curled up in a stone niche, behind the statue of a Nimgoni warrior in heroic pose, its many flailing tentacles covered in dust. Clouds and the hurrying moon made it look as though it stirred, but if he put his hand on it there was no tremor of movement.
>> 
>> A dry wind brought the scents of stone and ancient decay, passing silently. Ahead of him, in a ruined tomb, brown rags of ...something... flapped, and the twisted forms of dried out Nimgoni cartilage rocked, slightly, as the breeze touched them.
>> 
>> _I'm imagining this, right?_ But the overwhelming panic had switched off, suddenly as it had come. He couldn't see the monsters any more, or feel the horror and hatred from which he had run. Gritty sand felt sandlike under him. And he was hungry.
>> 
>> He squeezed out from behind the sinister carving, and at that moment a beam of red light hit him in the face. He froze; _No danger! I didn't feel any danger!,_ but there hadn't been any warning when the madness struck either. What if...
>> 
>> "It's only a kid!"
>> 
>> "Shut up! D'you wanna bring the Prowlers?"
>> 
>> The targeting spot swept down, out of his eyes. It took a moment for the afterimages to fade and then he could see that there were three of them; shabby humans with thin, hard faces. They crowded close, pressing him back against the stone. He wasn't sure if it was a threat, or if they were just afraid of the open spaces.
>> 
>> "This is our patch, kid," the blonde woman at the back whispered, narrowing her colourless eyes. She held the blaster-rifle awkwardly, like someone else's baby, but her authority was well worn and sure. "What are you doing here?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan couldn't think of anything better than the truth; "I'm lost."
>> 
>> It made them all laugh, choking it back behind their hands so as not to disturb the silence. "How can you be lost here?" the woman mocked him - her spirit as calloused as her hands; 'Oh I just stepped out in the middle of this salt-plain by accident.'"
>> 
>> "I'm an offworlder. I was separated from my party, and I need to get back to the Embassy. Can you help me?" He tried the mind-trick. Once or twice it had come easily to him. This time it did not, and the effect was not quite what he was hoping for.
>> 
>> "Maybe you can help us."
>> 
>> "Dena," One of the men; late twenties, dark, with a beard like an artistic statement - two ridiculous spots - spoke up reproachfully, "We agreed a four way split on anything we find."
>> 
>> "Yeah, we don't have to pay him." Dena glanced at him, went back to surveying the tombs with stretched eyes, "But he's small - we don't have to dig such a big hole. Less noise to attract them." Her wary smile was crooked, as though the starved face didn't have room for it, "Then when we got the stuff, we help him back to his embassy, and maybe get a reward. How about that?"
>> 
>> Both men were clutching filthy bags from which poked the handles of picks, smooth with wear. The evidence clicked into meaning with a sensation of vague horror; "You're grave robbers!"
>> 
>> "No!" Dena's eyes were the colour of liquid oxygen and just as warm. She forgot to whisper. "I'm no grave robber, I'm an architect. Blue..." she nodded at the third man. Big and shy, he shrank back slightly at hearing his name, "Is a droid personality programmer. Gemmer's a fabric designer. You tell me who'll pay for any of that now. Haven't you noticed the war?"
>> 
>> "If you rob graves then you're a grave robber." It occurred to Obi-Wan an instant later that however technically correct he might be it had not been the most helpful thing to say, but by that time it was too late.
>> 
>> Dena grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. "My family is starving! Gemmer's baby is sick. Don't you dare judge us, you off-planet little snot. You don't know what it's like down here."
>> 
>> "Dena!" hissed Blue, "Ssh!"
>> 
>> Startled, she fell silent. All three stood warily, listening to the whisper of the dry wind for a long tense moment.
>> 
>> _If I ran now they'd never catch me,_ he thought, but there was something about the shape of the light, a pressure in the landscape of the Force, which kept him where he was.
>> 
>> Dena stirred at last. "Nieman and the kids can't keep the Prowlers distracted for ever. Let's get going."
>> 
>> Nimgoni statues - writhing horrors of tentacles - looked down as they walked a long avenue between flat-topped pyramids and stele. Steps led down into a barren courtyard, salt and stone frigid under the gaze of monstrous gods; gods with bird-faces, with toothed beaks and pincers.
>> 
>> The final deity stood on a plinth half a metre from a sheer wall. Blue squeezed into the gap and disappeared. Gemmer went after. With a hand knotted in the folds of Obi-Wan's hood Dena tugged him forwards in time to see Gemmer's sack being pulled into a gap in the cliff side. The men's shabby, sand coloured clothes made white patches against utter darkness, and were swallowed. Scraping noises seemed unbearably loud in the sacred setting. "Your turn."
>> 
>> It was a big hole at first - large enough for Blue, who was wider across the shoulders even than Master Jinn. _Force! Don't let him have to come and rescue me. He already thinks I'm useless. Now I get to be a nuisance too?_
>> 
>> He shook the thought off. It wasn't going to come to that. He was going to do the Jedi thing - wait until the situation became clearer. But when it did, he was going to get back on his own. _I'm not useless!_
>> 
>> A short way down the sandy passage there was a niche where Blue crouched. "You go on past," he said. Like Obi-Wan's master he had a gentle voice, and he favoured Obi-Wan with a hesitant smile, "Don't look so worried, kid. We're good people really."
>> 
>> "Huh, well, you are." Dena pushed Obi-Wan forward so she could hand Blue the blaster-rifle. He took it as if there was something obscene about it - reluctantly - and Obi-Wan decided they were probably correct. Blue was OK. A criminal, but nice with it.
>> 
>> "Listen, kid." It had begun to annoy him that she hadn't even asked for his name. "Do you know what a blaster-rifle sounds like?"
>> 
>> In his sleep. He nodded.
>> 
>> "If you hear Blue start shooting you drop whatever you're doing and get up here fast. He'll blow the Prowler to bits, and we'll leg it before any more can come. You've gotta get over the wall - understand? They won't follow you over the wall."
>> 
>> "The wall?" Even Dena was defrosting a little, as though she liked this unstable hole in thousands of tonnes of rock better than she liked the sunshine. The Prowlers must be serious indeed.
>> 
>> "It's transparisteel, about waist high. You must have climbed it when you got in. But if you can get back over it you're safe."
>> 
>> "Due North from here," Blue offered, and turned back to watching the entrance. Kindly, taciturn, competent - Obi-Wan was liking him more and more. He began to hope for the crime to go smoothly, just so Blue would never have to use that rifle.
>> 
>> Past Blue's niche the tunnel narrowed. He got down on hands and knees, crawled further in, salt and sandstone abrasive beneath his palms. _How did I get those cuts?_
>> 
>> A glow-rod ahead showed Gemmer crouched in his own alcove, holding out the two sacks. The strange beard made his face look sinister, as if bisected by a cleaver from nose to chin. In the ivory light his eyes glittered with barely restrained panic. _He's too fragile for this,_ Obi-Wan thought, and Jedi-like, took note of Gemmer as the weak link in the party.
>> 
>> Beyond the fabric designer's alcove the diggings narrowed again, until dry stone was brushing his shoulders, pressing down on his back. His nose and mouth filled with dust, but he tried not to sneeze, imagining the noise racing up the corridor, expelled like a laser-bolt into the watching silence.
>> 
>> Cramped into the tube, his body blocked the light behind him, and his grazed hands found the end of the tunnel by instinct.
>> 
>> "We there?"
>> 
>> "Yes."
>> 
>> "OK. You take the pick - don't get any funny ideas - and dig. Pass the rubble back to me, I'll pass it to Gemmer, understand?"
>> 
>> She really did think he was brain-dead, didn't she? "Of course."
>> 
>> "Kid?" A softening in her voice. Maybe she was about to hand him some grudging piece of comfort. He didn't need it.
>> 
>> "My name's Obi-Wan."
>> 
>> "Whoa, that's a mouthful!" Something in her eased, as if here in the darkness she could risk being herself. "You really are foreign." He could hear the smile, "Dig quietly, Obi-Wan."
>> 
>> The pick felt familiar in his hand. Though the rubble was hard-packed, compressed by thousands of years, it was still lighter work than the mining he'd done on Bandomeer. But there he had been able to stand upright; he had been less aware of the great weight poised to come down at any moment on his back. Hadn't they brought props? What was holding it up, apart from inertia?
>> 
>> After a while that threat became like a third person in the tunnel with him, and Dena's presence, quiet, the attitude dropped, was reassuring. _Maybe she's not so bad. Maybe she's just scared too?_
>> 
>>   
> 
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>> Reaching for a loosened rock, his hand met marble. Pallid, smooth and - if he read the Force correctly - only a hand's breath thick before emptiness.
>> 
>> "Yes!" Dena was working on her belly now - there was no longer space enough for her to kneel. Her dim, dirt-streaked face seemed less real than the ice-white wall. "We've reached the chamber. Just pray this wall is thick."
>> 
>> "It isn't."
>> 
>> She set up her barriers against him - her face becoming suspicious. "How do you...?"
>> 
>> "It's about this depth." He demonstrated the distance, curious as to why she wanted the digging to go harder.
>> 
>> "Hells!"
>> 
>> As though he'd knocked her out, she lay prone in the corridor, cheek pillowed on the dust. But the unconscious don't engage in fierce moral struggle. When she looked up again he knew she was going to do something she might have to regret for the rest of her life. His hand strayed to his sabre.
>> 
>> "Go on then," she said, "What're you waiting for?"
>> 
>> He turned back, and again, when he wasn't looking at her, she relented. "Try to make the hole arch shaped. It's going to be under a lot of stress."
>> 
>> Understanding brought outrage. _This is what's supporting everything? And she wants me to cut through it? She's risking my life without even asking!_ "I don't think I should do that."
>> 
>> "It's not like you have a lot of choice, Obi-Wan." The armour was back over her soul, and her voice was as it had been when she had him in the sites of her blaster. A hand flicked to her sleeve and brought out a knife. "After all, you're only a little boy."
>> 
>> Back at the Temple his first response to that would have been fury. He would have _had_ to take her down. Now he thought _Master Jinn wouldn't like me to hurt her,_ and the anger found a new target. _But he's not here, is he? Off minding someone else's business, as he always is when I need him._
>> 
>> Grimly, he pushed the anger away, concentrated on the Force, bringing his hand up "You don't want to...."
>> 
>> And shots tore through words and Force alike. "Blue!"
>> 
>> Dena was already struggling backwards. Why couldn't she go faster?
>> 
>> Up ahead he could hear Gemmer crawling away, muttering pointless sentences of denial; "No. No this can't be happening. Please!"
>> 
>> The light receded with him. In the following darkness the blaster strobed the corridor with gold.
>> 
>> In the entrance - a burning hole of green light which dazzled as they scurried up to it - Blue was silhouetted. Clinging to the shaft of a pick which had been driven into the wall, he fired the enormous blaster one-handed against...what? It looked as if the very stone moved - air, salt and stone forming long snakelike limbs that reached down the corridor, plucked at Blue's face, trying to pull him out into the day. He was firing and weeping at the same time.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan stopped, focused, and saw the huge creature clearly - the Force asking him to admire its perfect camouflage; its fitness, its beauty. Lying still on the necropolis' pale sands it would be utterly invisible. Even in movement it was hard to see. _Yes, yes,_ he thought, impatiently, _It's very nice. Now help us survive it._
>> 
>> Blue's shots had severed the first tentacle. Its colour ebbed away, becoming greenish, like the sky. Rolling on the tunnel's floor it made footing treacherous for Obi-Wan, hampered Blue's exit. More of them might block the hole altogether. "We've got to get out into the open! Blue, move!"
>> 
>> Confusion - Blue's shots driving it back. Obi-Wan trying to get past Gemmer. Gemmer, trembling, desperate to run. Dena, unable to see at the back, shouting useless advice. Someone had to take charge. Obi-Wan thumbed his lightsabre on - the blade sliced the darkness; instant authority.
>> 
>> "Hells! The kid's a Jedi!"
>> 
>> "Gemmer," he said, "Get behind me. You run when I say so, not before. Come on Blue, we're going to drive it away, like you planned."
>> 
>> Just as they planned, except that he didn't like the way it retreated - slowly, taking terrible damage in utter silence. _As if it's trying to draw us out. But what else can we do?_
>> 
>> At last, air, light, and room to move. It had torn down the statue at the entrance and now filled its place. Revealed, with its bulging copper eyes, its soft body lying flaccid on the ground, its tentacles writhing like a tornado of flesh around a mouth full of razors - the Prowler was one of the gods of this place made real.
>> 
>> "Keep shooting. Don't worry about me - you can't hit me."
>> 
>> _Great, Obi-Wan, you talk like you've got faith. Now have it._ He ran out - to the left. Between them they could perhaps keep it pinned, while Dena and Gemmer ran. It slapped at him, almost lazily, and - Gods! - it was fast.
>> 
>> His heart lurched _There is no fear, there is only the Force_. He leapt. The limb cracked like a whip as it tried to change direction. Tumbling, he brought the blade down - no feeling of resistance, but suddenly the tentacle was twitching at his feet. _Easy!_ And the second and third came at him from both sides, making him jump up, into the path of the blaster-bolts. _No. This thing's smart!_
>> 
>> He deflected fire - it smashed harmlessly into the tomb - dived, cut again. How many shots in the rifle's power-pack? Why hadn't he asked?
>> 
>> The tentacle that Blue had severed was regrowing - already a thin cable covered with serrated scales. _I'm carrying water in a sieve here. Got to go for the body._
>> 
>> Gemmer broke from the doorway, Dena behind him. Sensible - only the dusty courtyard and the long quiet road in front of them - so why did he want to scream at them to stand still?
>> 
>> 'Trust your feelings, Obi-Wan,' his master had said to him, in the days when they used to talk, 'Trust your unconscious connection to the Force.' "Dena! Gemmer! Stop!"
>> 
>> She obeyed him. Gemmer ran on. And the white salt rippled ahead of him, opened bronze, metallic eyes, boiled with tentacles.
>> 
>> They pulled him apart, between them, before Obi-Wan could take his next breath, and the pale city was sprayed with red.
>> 
>> "Damn!" Dena was on her knees, chanting it, "Damn! Damn! Damn!"
>> 
>> _There is no passion, there is the Force._
>> 
>> Hard to count, hard to see - they merged into each other - but at least twelve. No chance at all. "Dena, back inside!"
>> 
>> She didn't move. He ran to her, pulled her shoulder, arm. Too heavy. "Move or die."
>> 
>> Blue came running - no gentleness in his face now - stuffed the blaster into Obi-Wan's hands, picked up Dena easily and bolted for the tunnel. Obi-Wan walked backwards after them, laying down fire.
>> 
>> They were in the entrance, Dena throwing up, Blue shuddering as if in hypothermia. "Go all the way down," he told them, "They can't follow, they're too big."
>> 
>> "So am I."
>> 
>> Dena wiped her mouth, looked up, "Gods, Blue! No."
>> 
>> But it was true, even now the tentacles had begun snaking back through the entrance, grabbing for him, and he would not fit further in.
>> 
>> Hard faced Dena was crying. A childish voice in Obi-Wan's head was saying, _Please stop it. This isn't fun any more._
>> 
>> "You know I never wanted to pick up a weapon again." Blue was crying too, though he had taken back the rifle and was still shooting, "At least let me die saving you."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan wanted to say something; something about how Blue was as good as any Jedi he'd known, how Blue constantly reminded him of his own master, but what would be the point? Words wouldn't make anything better. He turned and pulled Dena deeper into hiding, all the way down to the pale wall.
>> 
>> They listened in silence to the barrage of shots, until it ceased. There was no scream. Thank the Force, there was no scream.
>> 
>> A faint _shush_ ing noise, like water over stones. His ears popped as if the air pressure had changed. What was it?
>> 
>> "Don't look so calm, you callous little bastard!"
>> 
>> "Just shut up! Shut up!" Shock and grief turned into rage; he wanted to shout them out until there was nothing left, maybe hit her - get her to take that back.
>> 
>> _'I won't take you as my apprentice. There's too much anger in you'_ He remembered Qui-Gon walking away from him; his last chance, gone. Remembered how furious it had made him. _He's unjust. He's wrong!_ But he hadn't been, had he? Not if Obi-Wan could react to a friend's grief by wanting to punch them.
>> 
>> He sighed, flinching away from that memory, and tried to find something more appropriate to say. "I'm sorry, Dena. I liked him too."
>> 
>> She met his surrender with her own. "What are we going to do?"
>> 
>> The noise came again - no longer like water, more like the abrasive passing of a small glacier - the sound of loose dirt being dragged inexorably forward. "Force! It's still coming!"
>> 
>> The striplight glow of his sabre lit groping ends of fingered tentacles, travelled upwards to where the soft bulk filled the corridor, squashing into every available space. He saw himself reflected in one liquid metal eye.
>> 
>> "Kill it!" Helpless, on her belly in the tiny space, Dena sounded panicky, but she was clearly still thinking; "The body'll block the tunnel. They won't be able to get past."
>> 
>> They'd have to take the body out before another could attack, and they could only come one at a time. Filling the corridor to capacity, unable to manoeuvre, he would kill them easily, one by one, and carve a passage out through the flesh after. Gruesome, but it sounded such a perfect plan. Why did he feel that it couldn't possibly work?
>> 
>> His ears popped again, an ache spreading through his sinuses, tightening across his whole face. He cut through the questing limbs and the effort left him panting. Why?
>> 
>> His chest hurt. Dena was gasping like an asthmatic where she lay. Realisation struck; _No air!_ The Prowler's boneless form had made an airtight seal in the tunnel, and they lay in a tiny pocket of oxygen which the lightsabre and their breathing were rapidly burning up.
>> 
>> A brief pause - severed tentacles twitched and their replacements wriggled worm-thin down the floor towards them. Obi-Wan shook his head, dizzy, his vision blurring. _This isn't working. Have to try something else._ Then he crawled over Dena, plunged the sabre into the white marble and cut the arch.
>> 
>> An ancient air sighed out, stroking through his hair, across his upturned face, like the touch of a ghost. He breathed it in and it tasted of spice.
>> 
>> "Get off me!" Dena bucked and twisted, "Get inside."
>> 
>> "That's not going to...."
>> 
>> "I mean it. If the wall fails the corridor collapses, but maybe not the chamber. Go!"
>> 
>> Something had wrapped around his boot - it felt like a feeder hose, but it was squeezing, pulling him back. He kicked out, slammed it against the roof. Dena had inched her way through the hole into shadow. As the creature's grip weakened he plunged forward himself, fell maybe a metre, and landed on a soft carpet of dust.
>> 
>> He breathed in mold, rolled to his feet, coughing, turned back to prevent the vast menace from pushing itself into the chamber after them. But it had stopped. Infant tentacles explored the arch with odd delicacy, fingered ends flexing.
>> 
>> Dena, the architect, saw what it was doing before he did. "Stop it! It's going to...."
>> 
>> And it pulled the wall down on top of itself.
>> 
>>   
> 
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>> Obi-Wan raised the lightsabre above his head, saw a domed roof, sagging, a patter of loosed mortar like dry rain. Everything was tipped slightly out of kilter - unstable, but holding. In what had been the corridor's mouth there was now no hole larger than the size of his finger. The Force told him it was blocked for a depth of at least three metres.
>> 
>> Gleams hurried across the floor as he moved the sabre's icy light, picked out blades as tall as he was; rings of gold that would have fitted round his waist; tiny models of Nimgoni servants doing heartbreakingly ordinary things - making tea, building houses, teaching children.
>> 
>> "I'm sorry Dena." Having laughed until her throat bled she now lay by the ruined door, sobbing. Dust, raised by the cave-in, had settled on her, covering her with layers of decay, "I'm going to have to shut off the light. I want to keep the power in case they decide to come back."
>> 
>> "It's OK. Let the dark come."
>> 
>> He sat down next to her, grateful for her breathing, her warmth. When the blade hummed into nothing, they were the only living things he had left.
>> 
>> Blackness pressed on his eyes, and pooled in his heart together. He sat there for a long time while his mouth dried and he wondered if he had any reason to hope.
>> 
>> Dena stirred beside him. The small sounds of sitting up, brushing tears from her face. Her voice was soft, and curious, as though she'd pared off all that callous, emerged as someone new. "Obi-Wan, you're glowing."
>> 
>> "What?" But it was true. Looking down, he could see the folds of his tunic outlined in pale saffron, and if he bent, the overlapped layers of fabric slid apart and light burst from the gap. "Oh, this. I'd forgotten about this."
>> 
>> He brought the stone out of his tunic like a pocket-sized star. His hand was full of golden radiance, so intense that the fingers glowed red.
>> 
>> Amazingly, Dena was smiling. "It's fantastic! How could you forget about something like that?"
>> 
>> "Most of the time it's just a rock." A black pebble, smoothed by water, red veined. Pretty, but something you'd kick aside as you walked down the road.
>> 
>> "Where'd you get it?"
>> 
>> She wanted to talk, and why not? What else did they have to do? Only he wished she had not chosen that particular subject. "My Master gave it to me."
>> 
>> Her face filled with curiosity, but he didn't want to be questioned about this. He rushed to fill in detail by himself; "It was when he first accepted me as apprentice - it's traditional to give a gift." So much anguish before then, and after.... _No. I'm not going to think about it._
>> 
>> "He said he found it when he was my age. It came from the River of Light on his homeworld."
>> 
>> She had closed her eyes, was lying back against the wall, surrendered to the story, but smiling. "That's nice," she said, unexpectedly, "Like he was trying to give you part of his own past; a piece of his youth, his home. That's...." the smile tucked in at the edges as if embarrassed, "Really sweet."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan felt his understanding of the universe falter. He remembered receiving the present - Master Jinn's big hand pressing it into his - and his own reaction _That's it? He's given me a pebble!_
>> 
>> Later, when he found out it was Force-sensitive, he'd begun to value it, but at the time his disappointment must have shown. _And there was this whole huge emotional subtext to the thing, that I completely missed?_
>> 
>> Why? Why did it take six months and a complete stranger to see what he should have seen? Why did he have to see it now, after the moment had been so comprehensively ruined? _No wonder he hates me._
>> 
>> "So what happened to him?"
>> 
>> Somehow he'd given her the impression his Master was dead. "Nothing. He's OK." _Do I know that? Really? What if he's hurt?_ He cut the thought off impatiently - there was nothing a bunch of bureaucrats could do, possessed or not, that would threaten Qui-Gon Jinn.
>> 
>> Dena sat up as if propelled by electric shock. "But that's great! There's still hope. He's going to come rescue you, right?"
>> 
>> Why were people always making assumptions about him?
>> 
>> A pain in his jaw told him 'you are doing something self destructive'. He acknowledged it, unclamped his teeth and said, "Yeah, maybe."
>> 
>> "Maybe?"
>> 
>> "It's a long story." _And I don't want to talk about it._
>> 
>> "Oh, right." Her surrender had not lasted long, she was fighting again, "And I've got so much else to do."
>> 
>> Did he owe Dena an explanation? _I don't think so._ But perhaps if he told it to her he could get it sorted out in his own head? _If there's any point._
>> 
>> "We don't get on so well."
>> 
>> If he put the stone down it faded, so he cradled it in both hands and rested his arms on his knees. Where did you start, telling a story as complicated as this?
>> 
>> "I guess I'll start right at the beginning. I wasn't a good student...."
>> 
>> Things rearranged themselves with a feeling of surprise - that the beginning had not been with him at all. "No actually you have to start with Master Jinn. He had a Padawan before me, whom he really cared about." _Bastard!_ "And this guy - Xanatos - turned on him, tried to kill him."
>> 
>> Telling it from Qui-Gon's point of view put a different slant on things, made him see causes he hadn't understood before. He went on, wondering, "It kind of destroyed him. He would volunteer for all the dangerous missions, you know, like he was hoping not to come back."
>> 
>> Hurt? No. Qui-Gon was a Jedi Master. He couldn't be hurt, but perhaps he had been trying to punish himself? The whole train of thought was too dark. Obi-Wan abandoned it and pressed on.
>> 
>> "Anyway, now I come in. And I wasn't a good student." It hurt to admit it _But I wasn't._ "I got angry, I got into fights, and because of it I'd been turned down by every knight who came to see me. Qui-Gon was my last hope."
>> 
>> "Qui-Gon?"
>> 
>> "It's his name - Qui-Gon Jinn."
>> 
>> She snorted softly, "Another foreigner." But he knew she was listening, and not unsympathetically.
>> 
>> "He didn't want me either. And I blamed him more than the others - because he'd ruined my last chance." It didn't get easier, replaying that rejection, especially not here, when the only thing standing between him and death was the hope that this time Qui-Gon wouldn't just walk away.
>> 
>> "There were," he didn't think he could explain about Yoda right now, "Important people in the Temple who urged him to take me on, but he wasn't having any of it."
>> 
>> He paused. The story seemed to have twisted out of his hands, like the white creature from the lake. _It trusted him - and not me._ How could he get it back?
>> 
>> "Poor guy." Dena said, surprising him, "He gets kicked in the face and while he's still reeling you all try to set him up for the same thing to happen again?"
>> 
>> Just like an adult to miss the point. Master Jinn wasn't the one suffering. _He_ was. He opened his mouth to protest.
>> 
>> "But I guess he must have changed his mind, eh? Or you wouldn't be here."
>> 
>> "I helped him. We were on a mining colony called Bandomeer. Xanatos had set up a trap for him, and I helped him beat Xanatos and save the planet." It sounded boastful, put like that, but what he remembered was a turmoil of confusion, annoyance and dread. "Maybe he felt he had to - because he owed me."
>> 
>> He had to? Obi-Wan remembered his master's words, just yesterday: "There's no surer way to ruin anything than to force it; the resentment pushes it apart from within. You end up with smaller pieces and bigger grudges than before." _Was he talking about us?_
>> 
>> "Well, OK." Dena picked up a limb-band like a child's hoop. Gold and gems flashed cold as she spun it, "So he owes you. That's good."
>> 
>> "No." He felt her gaze brush his cheek as he stared down. "No, there's more."
>> 
>> "As good as a vid," she said, touching his arm to show she wasn't mocking. The thin face was saddened by its crooked smile.
>> 
>> "For a while things went alright. Not brilliant, but alright."
>> 
>> "I hear an 'and then'."
>> 
>> "And then I...." His throat closed, "I...." Could he get through this part of the story without thinking? Without remembering? _Let's try it._
>> 
>> "I betrayed him. Just like Xanatos; I left him and I left the Jedi to start a war. I...found some new friends," _Cerasi!_ Her laughter, her sense of purpose, the strength and beauty of her spirit.
>> 
>> "I drew my sword against him. I told him to leave me and go away, and he did."
>> 
>> "And yet here you are - with him?" Dena's face was bland, reassuring. If he'd seen any emotion at all he wasn't sure he could have gone on.
>> 
>> "It all went wrong."
>> 
>> _Cerasi!_ Dying in his arms, green eyes glazing, part of his soul being torn away forever. And the meaningless days afterwards when he couldn't think or breathe for pain, when he watched everything he'd built dissolve and couldn't care about any of it.
>> 
>> "So I called him for help, and he came. But he couldn't trust me any more." Obi-Wan risked a glance at Dena. Her eyes were cold again, like the centuries of dead dust she sat in. He didn't want to hear an 'I'm not surprised,' he'd had too much of that at the Temple.
>> 
>> "I've tried, and tried to show him that this time I'm going to do better. I'm going to be perfect." He could hear the anger in that, and habit made him breathe it down before he continued.
>> 
>> "I helped him track down Xanatos, when I could have got kicked out of the Order for it. I thought he'd be grateful - the extra loyalty would _show_ him I'd changed - but if anything it's made it worse. He doesn't even see me. I'm just a nuisance."
>> 
>> Talking hadn't helped. He bit down hard against tears and told the pain in his jaw to shut up about it this time. _I can't afford to cry. There can't be that much air left in here._
>> 
>> The light in his hands flickered as he fought despair; "So I don't know," he said, finally, "I don't know if he's going to come or not."


	4. Chapter 4

"Kirru! Kirru, come here!"

He came, reluctantly, to the door. Silver light poured out onto the snow. His mother's silhouette radiated anger. _And fear for me. I disappoint her._ How much had she seen?

After the wind's serrated chill the house was hot, oppressive, confining. He turned at the doorway and blew out one free breath - it exploded in a shower of ice, defiant.

"You've been fighting again."

In the kitchen he let her hands turn him, explore the cut, caress the line of frozen blood, all the bruises. Without needing to look up he knew her face was changing from irritation to sadness - her shoulders were dropping, back bending under the weight, the weight of her love for him.

"Oh, Kirru. Why must you do it?" _Why?_ She didn't really want to know, but if she went on like this much longer he would tell her. He would. _Serve her right!_ "Taking on boys twice your age. Your own cousins.... Miri won't speak to me after this, and Jenji won't stop speaking."

Auntie Miri was listening in the hallway. She thought that because the door was shut and he couldn't see her he wouldn't know she was there. But he could have felt those faded yellow eyes on him across the whole width of the planet. Her thoughts were very loud; "If only she'd given him away..."

Like an echo from Auntie Jenji - who was chopping wood half a mile away, struggling to load unwieldy branches onto the gravsled - "If only they'd taken him."

It didn't seem fair that the aunties who hated him should see further into his heart than his own mother. She was his only defender, and her love for him was like a metal hook in his chest - if he pulled too far away the pain was unbearable. So he gave her something, though less than she deserved; "I don't know why I do it, mum. It's like there's a switch in my head and they press it. I don't know why."

Silence. Something brushed his mind and was gone - something glorious. _No! Come back. I want you!_ Loss cut him, making his lip tremble. He hoped his mother would read that as remorse, but she was still silent, waiting for more, hoping.

The kitchen's earth walls glowed with stored heat. Warm green tiles slicked underfoot as the snow melted from his boots. At the sink a pink domestic droid pared _trelga_ roots with calm efficiency. Jenji's pet _hrafn_ trilled in its enamelled cage.

It was bad. The silence had never lasted this long before.

Finally his mother sighed, brought her hand out of her apron as if she was bringing out a weapon. "That's not entirely true, is it?"

What did she have? It was small enough for....

"How long have you been taking these?"

His tapes! Pulse speeding, stomach queasy, he tried to fight the feeling of betrayal, and failed. She must have combed his room, found the loose tile, his cache, his very own private world. Then she must have taken it, and looked!

"That's _mine_."

"Deep training combat tapes?" How dare she say those words and make them sound shameful? "No wonder you beat your cousins. How many years have you been taking these things?"

"Four." The word came out by itself, like the very tip of an arrow in flight - the barbs would come next.

"Since you were six?" she whispered, retreating until the table nudged her in the back. Her hands sought the edge and gripped. He focused there - on the coral skin, the tendons standing out, and knew how much she wanted to slap him across the room and scream.

Her voice came out thin, stressed like the cords of her wrists. "Kirru, when you reach twenty your father will take you away from me. You'll walk the long pathways of the men, taking _sthredy_ fur to the islanders, and the spaceports, bringing back machines and food, and the brief joy of your presence."

_She touched my stuff!_

"This is the life you were born for - to be a trader, the son of a trader." Her voice fluttered like a wing-sore bird, falling. He looked at the stained apron, smelled meat and flour - dinner cooking - and his heart had to expand to hold the rage, there was so much of it.

"You'll have adventures then, you'll have everything you could want."

Her thumb had found the delicate contacts under the tape's cap. He lunged - "Don't you dare! That's _mine_ ,." - pried the fingers open. She dropped it, wrenched him backwards, and stepped on his world, crushing it.

"We'll get you something else - anything you want."

"You...! You...!" Finally he looked at her face - the red skin paled to pink, eyes like haunted ivory - closed as usual over her own desires. Blind, stupid, hateful.

"I hate you!" The truth came out in a gush, like spring thaw. He could no more have stopped it than the seasons. "You're always ruining things for me. You took away the only thing I ever wanted. You don't care about me at all!"

With the impact of a spirit shout, the words hammered her. He watched her reel back and thought _I've smashed you, like you smashed my tape._ Remorse and exultation squabbled over his soul, tearing it between them. _Mummy!_

He pushed past her, slammed the door-release, and ran out into the ice.

 

* * *

"She wrecked my whole life," Kirru said to his master. They sat on white fur in his den. _Thref_ trees clustered close around the entrance of the cave, dark shapes trailing strings of wilted flowers. Under the weary sun their berries were black, but if he took them into torchlight they flamed the same colour as his skin. He spilled his handful on the rugs and they lay like drops of blood.

_"Tell me."_

Kirru's master was a thing of smoke and fervent need. His voice was deep and smooth, and no-one heard it but the boy.

"I could have been a Jedi."

It didn't matter that they'd had this conversation so many times that any living thing would be weary of it. Kirru's master was never weary.

"They came for me when I was a baby. They wanted to take me..." In front of his only friend - the friend he kept locked up tightly in his head - he could allow himself to cry. He did so now, the tears freezing to sharpness on his cheeks. "And she wouldn't let them."

Jenji had told him the story a long time ago. Hoping - he knew what she hoped - that he would stop having the nightmares once he understood. Hoping that an explanation for his strangeness would help him control it. Hoping that he would stop being such a problem.

Her voice repeated itself in his head. "They came for you in the deep winter. The man was pale, like bone, with fur on his head, like sthredy fur, but rougher - brown. He had a little girl with him - she was all brown - and they were both so quiet. They were like the Spirit of the Snow. Of course your mother couldn't let you go to such coldness. You are her only child."

_"But now you hunger."_

"I want something, and I don't know what it is!" Blood, blood on the rugs, red against white, and the words coming out like gushes from a severed vein. "It must be the Force I feel. It must be. I want it. I want it but it won't stay. I don't know how to get it to stay!"

Curled up, he lay on his side, and a small breeze blew dead petals over his face. He wanted comfort, but his master was the spirit of the snow and had nothing to give.

 _Yes, you're starving, because you cannot touch the Force. But you've taught yourself well. When you're old enough you can get away, show the Jedi what you've become. They'll take you on then._ It began in his master's voice, ended in his own. He knew it was false, but it was the only hope he had.

_Now run, Kirru, just run. Get away from it all._

 

* * *

The woods were a narrow band of life, clinging to Saw Mountain. He pushed his way through them, came out onto the plateau, the sun red in front of him, taking up half the sky. To his left lay a hollow, surrounded by the purple posts of the force-shield windbreak. He could see through it to the domes, steam and smoke of his house. To the right the plains went on for ever - scoured snow over permafrost; pink and white and palest azure against the ice-blue sky.

He turned right and ran against the wind. Skin-stripping cold froze his eyes. His face stiffened, and his body yelled at him to stop this before he died. He set his jaw, ran faster, gasping, cold pounding his chest like a mallet. Exhaustion hit him, he grinned - yes, it was going to work this time - and pushed himself, sobbing, over the edge.

And his mind flowered. Something golden poured into him, outlining the waves of wind, so he could step between them. It showed him the sun, the world, the trees, himself; little warm lives of rodents in tunnels under the snow; sthredy on the mountain hot with danger and grace; his own house like a beacon.

His house! Something wrong!

He had turned without knowing it. Now he saw dark shapes in the sky wheeling over his home. Massive birds?

Flashes of sulphur light speared the ground. Something black was rushing at him. _What...!_

Terror, confusion - and the Force span away from him like a wind-snatched cloak. _No! Come back!_

The black thing was a droid; a sinister ball, red lensed, with dangling, delicate claws. It swept up to him, stopped. He swallowed, stone still as it circled him. There was no yellow fire, no blasters. It chuckled away to itself in electronic code and even its voice sounded like metal.

"Get away!" Shoving it was no good. It just danced out of the way, smoothly, silently, the eye never wavering from his face. Claws twitched, and his dried lips cracked as he bit down on them, but still it did nothing; only stared.

He dared a step towards the house. Skin on his back puckered as he imagined the droid's hidden blasters slipping out from their casing, the flash, the sear of heat. It didn't come. He looked back - there it was, just a little too close, muttering to itself like a madman, staring.

Inside him, something snapped - he took off, faster than he'd ever run, panic driving him. The mad droid matched his speed - _Ancestors! Get it off me!_ \- and he didn't know if he fled towards his family, or just to get away from it.

Trees were on his left, their dim shadow tempting. He could run in there, hide, maybe smash the droid into the wall of his cave. _But what about Mum?_ And he recoiled from his own cowardice. _I'm going to be a Jedi. I'll save her!_

He stopped. The wild energy within him urged him to keep running; run down the slope, break the runner from a sledge and just hit them - hit those people with the guns until they went away.

It was what a child would have done, and the tape-trained portion of his mind looked at it with contempt. _No, I have to find out what's going on first. I have to find out how many there are, and get myself some weapons._

A whine pierced his head. The droid? He looked, it looked back, smug, sinister. No, not the droid.

The sound scaled up, dopplered like a moving thing. A flash of reflected light showed in the woods. He smelled fuel and fear, and hurled himself to the ground just in time.

Joriu staggered out of the undergrowth - a glimpse showed Kirru the mindless terror in his cousin's face, the burn, sticky with fluid, across his shoulder. He lurched onwards, his legs obviously failing, staggered towards the house.

Laughter. A bolt of fire came out of the trees and exploded like a firework on one ankle. Joriu screamed, fell, scrabbled to hands and knees, and began to crawl forwards.

 _Idiot!_ Part of Kirru's mind hadn't gone numb. Part of him didn't want to just be sick. He gave himself up to that part of him, gladly.

Bursting out of the trees, a swoop caught the light of the sun and blazed like a Hell-bike. The giggling rider aimed again, took out Joriu's other foot. Stupidly, animal like, Joriu dragged himself onwards.

_Don't play that game. Idiot!_

What could Kirru do? The swoop was slow now, following Joriu's crawl, taunting him. But it was too high for Kirru to jump up to. _What can I do?_. Rage at his own impotence kindled inside him, pushed at his throat.

At Joriu's slow pace the rider had plenty of time to aim. Crack of fire, and the blaster bolt tore through Joriu's trembling right hand. The scream and the laughter were equally loud.

"Don't touch him!" Anger slung Kirru to his feet, small hand upraised as if he levelled a weapon at the rider's face. He couldn't watch Joriu suffer any more. He didn't love his cousin, it was more basic than that. Too many of his things had been smashed today. "Don't touch him, he's _mine_!"

The shriek of rage was only part of what was going on in his head. His eyes were filled with the red dazzle of the swoop, the pulsing fire of the shots. Fuel smell coated his lungs. Inspiration struck; fire and fuel - he could bring them together, all it needed was a spark.

With the anger pulsing through him, he felt huge, powerful. So this was how you harnessed the Force! He let the anger leap out of his hand, travel up the smell of fuel, find the tank. Then he made fire happen. _Easy. So easy!_

Fire tore the pipes, exploded out of captivity. The swoop came apart in slow motion, its jagged edges tearing the rider to pieces even as the inferno swallowed him.

Kirru laughed and laughed, because he was stronger, and he could.

Silence as the pieces fell on the ice. The black droid whirred a little, nothing else.

"Ancestors protect!" Joriu rolled over, sobbing, and looked at Kirru as if he'd never seen him before, "What the Hell are you?"

"I'm going to be a Jedi." No way could they reject him now - not after that display of power. He looked down on his cousin and managed to feel affection. "Don't worry. I'll save the others."

But when he got up his knees buckled. Sweat soaked his clothes and the wind plucked at them. In the heat of the explosion his face had tingled briefly - he fingered it and felt a ragged cut across his jaw. There was no blood - his skin was too cold to bleed. _I could die of that._

Fear found the place in his heart where the anger had been; the place which had emptied when he smiled at worthless Joriu. It was not a comfortable power, but it helped him lock his knees and stand. He felt now as frozen inside as out.

Cooling metal _pink, pink_ ed in the snow. Sharpened edges glinted in the red sunlight, offering themselves. He chose an axis strut - long enough for a spear, the end sheared into two wicked spikes - and a fragment small enough to be palmed.

"Joriu, straight through the trees there's a cave; furs inside. Get there and keep warm, I'll come back for you."

"Kirru," the first hint of respect he'd ever got from a cousin, "Don't go down there, they'll kill you."

"I can't let them get mum."

 

* * *

Between the icy fringe of his hood and the snow was a small stripe of colour. He lifted his head and the stripe resolved itself into smoke, hanging over the back of the house, figures in the courtyard moving randomly, the doors wide open, spilling precious heat into the air.

Sound warned him and he pressed his head down as the patrolling swoop grazed the edge of the windbreak. Above him, like a spirit-companion, the black droid hovered, marking him. Yet the alien on the swoop was taking no notice of the droid, and hadn't seen him - dug in, his white fur parka and leggings invisible against the snow. Why were they ignoring the droid? Was it important to know?

The swoop passed. He looked up again, watching it. Distilled wisdom from his tapes replayed itself in his head, confusing him. "'Do not leave an enemy at your back,'" and "'Do not advertise your presence.'" He couldn't blow this one up without failing the second, but he couldn't just sneak past either.

Finally he put back his hood and struggled to his knees, concealing his spear under a thin layer of snow.

 _I'm a helpless victim,_ he thought at the pirate, hoping some of it would come through, _Come down and taunt me. I'm a helpless little boy._

An ugly voice swore. _Yes,_ Kirru thought fiercely, _So much for your lookout._ The swoop flipped and dived for him. Something flapped from the saddle like a grotesque banner. An arm. Auntie Miri's arm with the bracelet that she loved, the one that was too small to get over her hand.

_Ancestors protect!_

The alien had snakes on his head, and teeth like needles. Urging the swoop lower he drew his blaster, shot. Green light seared past Kirru's face as he hurled himself away. Snow melted down to bedrock. The droid shrieked an electronic curse - protecting him? - but Kirru had rolled, bounced to his feet and flung the spear before he finished the thought.

Tape trained reflexes, tape trained accuracy, but the strength of a ten year old boy. The spear flew true - a moment of triumph keen as pain - and it buried itself in the man's face, mauling him horribly. Kirru had struck to kill, but hadn't had the strength. Now as the creature toppled off the bike to lie writhing at his feet, he looked down on its agony and decided this was better.

The droid's chuckle had a sound of approval to it. Kirru smiled. Something in the universe approved of him. That was new.

Now he had a blaster and a swoop. He hauled himself into the saddle, reached forward uncomfortably for the controls - everything too big for him. They were similar to the speeder-bikes his mother would take him to ride as a treat if he'd been good, if he hadn't hurt any one....

Feeling safer, the other Kirru - the child - had woken up again. It wanted to cry. He felt the sob come involuntarily and choked it back. _Stupid, stupid, stupid! You can't do that yet. Mum needs you._

His mother was still alive. Of course she was. Miri might be dead - he didn't care about that - but his mother was alive. He was going to save her.

Pulling his hood up he turned the swoop and drifted slowly toward the courtyard. It was hard to approach gently - his hands were shaking. Adrenaline spiked again and his breath came shallow as the scene branded itself on his eyes.

A snake-headed woman, barely clothed, had his mother's jewellery box open on her lap, pawing through it. Above her head a grotesque flying creature cuddled a blaster-rifle as it stared disdainfully at the revels. It had a voice like mucus which it showered on the only man seated - a big human with a shaggy black beard and the glitter of drugs in his eyes. "We're wasting time. It's dangerous."

"The client's too uptight, Warra, and so are you. Let the boys have some fun."

Kirru marked the man, _I should have saved my spear for him,_ looked harder, trying to find his mother.

Two humans had a child pinned, struggling, on the floor: Genju, his youngest cousin, screaming at the top of his voice while they hit him. He was a snitch, but he didn't deserve that.

Hairy, huge, a monster shouldered out of the broken doors, dragging someone by their bound wrists.

_MUM!_

Relief went over his body like a fever, shaking it. _Don't get weak now. Not yet._

Her dress was torn, her mouth bloody. Genju's tormenters looked up speculatively as she was tugged past, and the anger began again, welcome as warmth.

"Please...." She sought the dark man's eyes abjectly, "What do you want with us?", and he smiled.

"We've come for your baby. But first we're gonna take everything else."

Too many of them. He had to.... The idea came like instinct. He had to swoop down, grab her, carry her out of there and then explode the generator. They'd all go up in flames. Genju too, but there was nothing he could do about that. Maybe he was dead already. Yes, he told himself firmly, Genju was dead already.

They'd thrown his mother on the ground. He gunned the motor, came streaking down, low. Her eyes widened, the bound hands reached out and he reached down.

A smack of light. He pretended to be dazzled so he didn't have to see his mother's face burned away. Uprushing air was scented with charred flesh. Conversations went on, unconcerned, as everything crumbled around him.

"Warra, you Sithspawn, I told you to leave it."

"Bloody fe-male, if you weren't so ugly...."

The flying alien's hawked reply; "Someone be a bit professional and get the kid, OK?"

They were after _him_? Well, dammit, they wouldn't get him. _I'll have you, you bastards, I'll have you all!_

He found the generator in his thoughts. He found the regulator, and the seething well of agony in his heart. He was going to bring them together.

A tiny pain, very cold. His hand reached up, distracted, brought away a dart from his shoulder. Just a second, staring at it stupidly, and then ice enveloped him, and he fell, helpless, straight into their waiting arms.


	5. Chapter 5

> > Something was tugging at his hand - a pattern of suckers across his knuckles. The touch branded Qui-Gon's skin with dark emotions; despair, loss, hunger. Even with his eyes closed he could feel the whirlpool of need in that presence. A need to which his own life meant nothing.
>> 
>> Forty three degrees to the left a spirit like imprisoned flame cried out "No! You can't!", in the voice of a human girl.
>> 
>> He breathed in, trying to focus, and his body screamed at him to stop.
>> 
>> Tentacles were trying to bend his fingers back to get at the lightsabre - he still held it, in a grip like rigor mortis.
>> 
>> A Nimgoni answered the girl, its voice utterly expressionless while the soft suction of its limbs trembled with desire. "These things have precious gems inside. Up to three of them. I can't get him to let go of it, so give me the knife."
>> 
>> "Human limbs don't regrow." Even from the girl there was a dark undertug that said pushed too far she would watch it happen. And another silent presence stood behind her, resentful, hostile, waiting to see how things would work out.
>> 
>> Relaxed, surrendered to the Force, it was an effort to do anything. Sleepily, on a cushion of almost consciousness, he thought _Why not fill their need? Let them take what they want?_ But life wouldn't let him go. _...Obi-Wan!_
>> 
>> He eased the splintered ribs out of his lungs, pushed them back into place, pain like a nagging child it was hard to have patience with.
>> 
>> The Nimgoni had lined up a blade against his wrist. He could hear one of its other tentacles slithering across the ground, looking for a stone big enough to use as a maul. _Strange,_ he thought, _The difference between species. A human would have gone for the fingers._
>> 
>> "Not the hand, Mama. You'll kill him!"
>> 
>> "He's dying anyway."
>> 
>> "Can't we wait until he's dead? Then use him? This doesn't seem..."
>> 
>> Not like a flame at all - he'd been wrong about that - more like a fusion reactor, bright, but under unimaginable pressure, and capable of terrible destruction if it slipped control.
>> 
>> "It doesn't seem decent, somehow."
>> 
>> He opened his eyes. Felt three reactions - the moment changing in a swirl of complexity. Mute disappointment from the third of them - a young Nimgoni. Guilt from the girl as she recoiled.
>> 
>> The knife hadn't moved from his wrist. Now a second tentacle came writhing over his face, settled on his throat. It was acutely uncomfortable to be touched with that amount of desperation. Its need sucked at him.
>> 
>> Tension cut like razor wire. He understood that if he said nothing it would kill him. If he said the wrong thing it would kill him. And yet it was in so much pain he could not help but pity it. Finally he breathed in, convulsed slightly with the desire to cough, and said "Tell me how I can help you."
>> 
>> Mottled patterns of pink and yellow swept over the creature's skin - where it touched him he could almost feel them; a faint electric tingle. He read bitterness and suspicion, a refusal to hope.
>> 
>> Horns of cartilage over the creature's eyes gave it a look of permanent surprise, but told him it was an adult female. _Responsible for the others, and afraid she'll fail them._ The thought made her violence instantly forgivable.
>> 
>> The knife trembled against his skin. Blood welled and slid down his wrist.
>> 
>> "Give us the lightsabre."
>> 
>> "No." He lifted his other hand gingerly - even that small movement sending waves of fire across his chest - and lifted the tentacle off his throat. Like walking forward to take the blaster from a terrorist, he succeeded only because her nerve failed first.
>> 
>> "The facetting is unique to the lightsabre design," he said, quietly, trying to show he didn't hold them in contempt for what they had been about to do. "Instantly recognisable. You'd be in deep trouble the moment you tried to sell them."
>> 
>> *On this world anyway.* Though there were collectors on some of the Hutt worlds who would pay a fortune for such a gem - a relic of one more dead Jedi.
>> 
>> Helplessness wiped off every pattern, left her grey. A moment later the younger Nimgoni - _Her son?_ \- echoed the colour. The human stuttered forward, as if to give comfort, but could not go through with the gesture. She drooped, sighing.
>> 
>> In the pause he pushed himself up onto hands and knees. Another convulsion, harder now. He gave in to it, coughed, holding his ribs in place with the Force. _Gods of Light!_ It hurt.
>> 
>> He spat the blood out on the ground, wiped his mouth with the dark sleeve of his robe, saw the girl, eyes closing, turning her face away from him. _I remind her of something. A death? Her father's death?_ It was wrong, _wrong_ , that her smooth young face should have to wear an expression like that. But that was war. One of its triumphs was to mutilate even the survivors.
>> 
>> "I'm sorry," he said, trying to catch her gaze. She was very careful not to look.
>> 
>> "Mama?" Empty voice. She was focusing on the present with a narrowness that even he found unhealthy, because both the past and future held nothing but terror for her.
>> 
>> The Nimgoni adult slithered to her side, and the same muscular tentacles which had pinned him down now curled protectively over the girl's shaking shoulders, brushed across her tangled auburn hair.
>> 
>> The lowering sun filled the sky with shades of peach and lime. _An acquired taste._ Salt flashed up sharp reflections - a myriad of taunting jewels worthless to this mother and her children. In the distance the tombs showed arid, sky mirrored on their smooth surfaces as if they were deliberately trying to hide. _Why would I feel that? Unless..._
>> 
>> He reached out for Obi-Wan. Their bond, once an intrusion so tight that he couldn't fight it off even when he tried, had failed on Melida/Daan and remained uncertain now. But he thought he felt fear; fear and a concentration so deep it would be dangerous to disturb it even with reassurance. One of his life's certainties re-established itself urgently in his heart. _I must find him._
>> 
>> "Well, if you won't give us the weapon there's nothing you can do for us."
>> 
>> It would be easy to watch them walk away and just be thankful that they hadn't hacked off his hand. But nothing happened by accident. They were in need. Why had the Force brought them to him if not to be helped?
>> 
>> Find Obi-Wan or fill the needs of this little party? _I will do both._
>> 
>> The mother was gathering up her children, urging them towards a landspeeder like a mobile scrap-pile.
>> 
>> A landspeeder!
>> 
>> "Wait." He barked out the order in one of the milder forms of his harsh voice. It stopped them like a tractor beam, and made the muscles of his chest spasm with pain. Fluid pooled in his lungs as he tried to talk. "Money is not what drives you. There's something else. Tell me."
>> 
>> "Like you care!" Surprisingly it was the young Nimgoni who answered, surging back towards him, swelling, bright green with threat. _Not just an adolescent display of temper,_ Qui-Gon thought sadly, _But genuine anguish over a lost faith._ He thought he could guess what that faith had been.
>> 
>> "If I can I will help you. My word as a Jedi."
>> 
>> "A Jedi!" The boy spat black ink - it smoked on the salt, dissolving it, "Shouldn't you be out saving a world somewhere? Escorting a princess? You don't give a damn about people like us!"
>> 
>> The faith was extinguished, but the ashes were still smoking, blistering the boy's mind every time he touched them. Another grief on top of everything else.
>> 
>> "Try me," said Qui-Gon.
>> 
>> He expected to be hit - three of the tentacles raised and snapped.
>> 
>> "Dek! Get in the speeder." A pattern of 'v's on Dek's mother meant indignant. Despite everything Qui-Gon's mouth quirked. The parental rebuke! Some things were the same worlds over.
>> 
>> "You too, Eryn." She came over to him, watched him struggling to stand - he focused inwards a moment, regulating bloodflow, swayed, and she put out a long limb to catch and steady him. "Do you mean that?"
>> 
>> "Hmn." He nodded - it hurt less than speaking.
>> 
>> "My name's Im, Im Simik."
>> 
>> "Qui-Gon Jinn."
>> 
>> "I have a little girl..."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon leaned on her, just for a moment, grateful for the support. His weakness was worrying, adding itself to a growing list of concern it was heavy to pick up. _I will not fail them. Any of them._ But it was difficult to exercise confidence when he could hardly breathe.
>> 
>> "We lived in Ic'Ram, until it was bombed. And the government relocated us."
>> 
>> He caught a sudden vision from her - vivid as the dreams. Panic; crowds bunched and straining for escape. Soldiers pushing her onto a transport. "No! My baby!" Zap of stun-poles, the little girl straining in the press, her skin transparent, like a scream.
>> 
>> "There was a crush and we were put on separate transports."
>> 
>> She had brought him to the landspeeder, a bizarre vehicle that caught his attention by its stench.
>> 
>> "I don't know where she is. She could be anywhere on the planet. I need money to bribe an official to search. They say it's unimportant! They say 'Don't bother us! But...."
>> 
>> "I'll find her."
>> 
>> The 'speeder had been given wheels - they made tracks in the shining plain. Behind the two children some arcane device had been welded onto the engine. Heat came fitfully from it and a smell that caught at his heart, dragged out memories of too many funerals - the smell of cremation. A combustion engine! And they were burning...?
>> 
>> There was a fuel basket by the girl's hand. It carried chunks of fat, bones, a pair of severed feet.
>> 
>> She caught him looking. Anger flared behind sullen amber eyes, "They were only humans."
>> 
>> So that was what she had meant by 'use him'. And still, hardened as she was, she had pleaded for his life. Evidently they had not yet killed for their furnace.
>> 
>> "The dead must serve the living," he said gently, suppressing the flinch of disgust, "But you are human too."
>> 
>> "No I'm not!" She had a question she needed to ask but didn't dare, a question that sharpened the terror of her future. He asked it for her;
>> 
>> "What will happen to Eryn here, when you get your daughter back? Will she be replaced?"
>> 
>> Emerald and ice-blue spelled anger and horror, and yet looked so splendid against the desolation. "How could you think that? Eryn is also my daughter. I wouldn't abandon her!"
>> 
>> He felt it with a rush of relief - the moment had arrived; the moment when he could stop waiting and act. One task would serve another.
>> 
>> "Of course." A child had come to her, unwanted, and now was central to her life. She would understand about Obi-Wan. "I have a son, like your daughter. He's out here somewhere, and in trouble. I was looking for him when I was attacked. Would you help me find him?"
>> 
>> Yellow as a beacon. He thought how marvellous it would be to be that expressive.
>> 
>> "Yeah, that's right." Dek's voice - he was striped with disappointment, "The Jedi offers to help us, just so he can use us."
>> 
>> "You don't think it's fair? I find your daughter. You help me find my son?"
>> 
>> A struggle for her to trust anyone. Why should she, when those in power had left her like this? Reduced to scavenging bodies to live.
>> 
>> "He's over there." Qui-Gon pointed at the distant necropolis, now green as anger under the hills. "And in danger."
>> 
>> "We're not going in there!"
>> 
>> "But you could take me to the wall."
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>> Evening brought a cold breeze off the mountains. It sighed through the dead streets, tugged at Qui-Gon's hair, belled the cloak out around him as he stood with his hand on the wall, searching for Obi-Wan.
>> 
>> _Imprisonment. Despair._
>> 
>> _Why should he feel despair? Doesn't he know I'll come for him?_
>> 
>> Obi-Wan seemed unhurt, for the moment, so Qui-Gon put the link out of his mind - he could not afford despair if he was to confront the guardians of this place.
>> 
>> "If you wait for me here, will they attack you?"
>> 
>> "No, it's safe on this side."
>> 
>> He considered asking Eryn for his comlink, but to do so would be to admit he'd noticed it was gone. It would be an accusation - 'You robbed me while I was helpless,' - which could damage the fragile trust they had managed to achieve. They were welcome to the small amounts of money and food he carried. The breather and comlink were machines he didn't wish to grow dependant on, and besides, he had humiliated these people quite enough just by not being dead.
>> 
>> If Obi-Wan was being attentive to the Force he would sense his master's presence and intent. If not, then he would learn a valuable lesson.
>> 
>> Just inside the transparent wall a reef of ceramic flowers bloomed. Their frail petals trembled in the breeze and filled the twilight with the sound of muted bells. A shingle of broken porcelain coloured the ground beneath them; purple threaded with gold.
>> 
>> The statue of an animal - like his little friend from the lake - sinuous and copper, was climbing up the inside of the wall. Moving air pushed across its open mouth with a sad drone of music. There were fish among the flowers, made of clay and cheap enamel. Every colour, they caught his Nimgoni trained eye in symphonies of beauty - strange combinations of emotion.
>> 
>> _This is not a graveyard,_ he thought suddenly, _It's an ocean. They come from the sea and return to it, spending their lives in exile here in a parched and barren land._
>> 
>> He looked back at the two Nimgoni. _I'm going to be trespassing on their heaven._
>> 
>> Both were yellow, the shade slightly different, betraying nuances he wasn't sensitive enough to read.
>> 
>> "If he's in there he's dead," Im wavered between suspicion and sympathy.
>> 
>> "No. He's alive but trapped."
>> 
>> "You _feel_ that?" Dek said, suspicion blotched with ...fascination? Yearning?
>> 
>> "Yes."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon lowered himself to his knees slowly, trying not to bend. Meditation posture was rigid enough not to hurt too much when he was there, but a torture to achieve.
>> 
>> "Have you got a plan?" Dek asked eagerly.
>> 
>> Laughter was like being kicked in the ribs, and suppressing it almost as bad. He thought of saying 'There is no plan, there is the Force,' but Dek wouldn't understand either the joke or the teaching. _Save it for Obi-Wan._
>> 
>> What was it with young men? Xan - with his brilliant mind - had been a great planner, and Obi-Wan was always nagging him about it; disappointed with his master's lack of forethought. _It's a need to be in control. A lack of trust..._
>> 
>> "No. The Force will lead me."
>> 
>> He breathed in, deeply, abandoning the pain - it didn't matter - and began to empty his soul, making a space for the Force to fill. He gave up responsibility for this injured family, for the ambassadors, for peace. He let go of Xan - the grief, the shame - and of everything good he had ever done.
>> 
>> _Your will, not mine._ Even if - a twinge of terror it was hard to loose - even if Obi-Wan is to die? _Yes, even then. Use me._
>> 
>> An image of his friend, Nis, flashed into his mind; the look of distaste as he'd tried to explain that the essence of a Jedi was surrender. "I don't do passive, Jinn."
>> 
>> If only he could show Nis what it was really like; like waking from deep sleep. Like being born.
>> 
>> Nis too he left behind. He rose, climbed over the wall and followed the Force into the city of the dead.
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>> At the end of a long avenue of stele and statues stood a massive tomb - the roof bowed in, fine dust still settling like ground-mist around it. Over the sunken courtyard before it there lay a huge crimson stain, filling the wind with the smell of blood.
>> 
>> _Oh Gods!_
>> 
>> _Acceptance. Surrender. Patience._ He breathed out shakily and sought confirmation along the bond with his apprentice.
>> 
>> _He's still alive._ The boy's emotions were clearer now - hopelessness, a struggle for air. Time was running out for him, and he was not paying attention to anything else.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon's shadow was the only moving thing in the courtyard, and yet the Force was full of life. He acknowledged fear, the lancing pain in his chest, uncertainty, then let them go and walked forward.
>> 
>> Liquid metal eyes opened all around him. The monsters rose out of the sand like the dead rising. Tentacles, palps and beaked mouths closed in on him, exactly the same colour as the blood.
>> 
>> The Force asked him to admire them - their silence, their predatory beauty, the clarity of their purpose. He stopped and obeyed. _Yes. I see it._ They were like a ship's shielding; not monsters but protectors. Like the initiatory rituals of some religions, their terror emphasised only the holiness of what they guarded. He focused on them and felt their minds, violent and pure as suns, watching him with not-quite certainty.
>> 
>> Tentacles wrapped themselves around his legs, pinned his arms, squeezing them together across his chest, bending the broken ribs, scything the sharp points through new wounds. The agony almost made his heart stop; he felt his skin go clammy, cold sweat on his palms. So hard to breathe this pain out, to keep his hold on the Force, but if he lost it he would lose everything.
>> 
>> "I don't...mean...any harm."
>> 
>> One of them had encircled his shoulders and waist. Now it pulled, beginning to climb. Its weight left the ground, settled on his chest. The world shattered, like an explosion of white glass. He could feel nothing else. When he regained his self-awareness he found he was screaming.
>> 
>> _The pain doesn't...matter._ Even thinking was impossible, but the Force was still there, holding him up, helping him to close his mouth and breathe again.
>> 
>> Teeth by his face - he was aware of plates of sharp cartilage and, oddly, a smell like grass.
>> 
>> _Shouldn't I do something?_
>> 
>> The teeth came together, shaving a narrow band of skin from his cheekbone. A tongue like a file rasped across the blood.
>> 
>> _Oh. They want to know what I am. They're trying to...talk._
>> 
>> Even now he could hardly avoid a wry smile at the other explanation _Or they're going to eat me VERY slowly._
>> 
>> Opening his mind completely brought a barrage of visions. Difficult to tell if they were a message, or just delirium.
>> 
>> Pepi, her skin melting in her mother's hands as the woman held her in the fire. The Council, coldly assigning them a mission where Xan would have to choose who to betray - his father or his master. His own hands, covered with blood, as he looked down on the dead face and suddenly saw what he'd done.
>> 
>> Hurtful images. His mind had explanations for them all, but his heart insisted 'They had no right.'
>> 
>> "Is that it? I have no right to be here?"
>> 
>> No response. He concentrated on his right - his _absolute_ right, his sacred duty - to go anywhere, do anything, to save his Padawan.
>> 
>> Sacred?
>> 
>> A whistling, like birdsong, thin and shrill. Then a deep note, phasing in and out. _Like...nnh...waves_ They showed him a Nimgoni priest, skin leafed with platinum, limb-bands, eye-rings, pierced teeth sharp with diamond. Each movement measured out by the staff of the ancients, breaching the barrier between this world and the next, creating a safe path. Behind, came the procession - drummers and singers, the horns voicing the ocean, the dead hero on a litter of coral.
>> 
>> Sacred?
>> 
>> He showed them the Jedi Temple; the healing crystals of fire; the council room, a place between worlds, from which the knights would leave to make the path safe for others.
>> 
>> Fringed fingers pried at his clothes; the distinctive robe, dirty and bloodstained as it was. "Yes. I am a...priest." Close enough. Easy for them to understand, and he needed easy now - his strength was failing fast.
>> 
>> _Not how I'd imagined going out._ He managed a gesture of regret towards his imagined death - an epic battle, fighting alone against the forces of evil. _Not in the middle of a...conversation._ Then he abandoned the regret and the vanity together. The Force was bright and close.
>> 
>> A Guardian had found his lightsabre, pulled it off his belt. They passed it among themselves, looking, bringing it to their mouths to taste. Their mood had hardened. They saw it was a weapon.
>> 
>> _The pain doesn't...nnh!...matter._
>> 
>> He showed them the Staff of the Ancients - pointed and edged with knives of sharpened shell - compared the two. "To protect."
>> 
>> And saw in return his apprentice's face, scowling with concentration, blue light in his hands like a gash in the world. Saw him leap and cut. Ichor spilled. Blasphemy, and PAIN, PAIN, PAIN.
>> 
>> _Ah Gods, Obi-Wan!_
>> 
>> The limbs tightened around him. Another burst of eviscerating agony. The teeth, which had been pressed against his cheek, slid apart, coming closer. Only a heartbeat before they closed.
>> 
>> He forgot himself completely and showed them Obi-Wan; a young acolyte, lost, confused and _Forgive me,_ frightened. Worthy of compassion. He let them feel the depths of his duty to protect this boy - a duty embraced as ardently as they embraced theirs. _The same. They are the same._
>> 
>> "He has no right to be here. Let me take him and go."
>> 
>> _Nnh!_
>> 
>> "Please."


	6. Chapter 6

> > Warra took the corner fast, her wings aching _Why can't I pack a lighter weapon?_.
>> 
>> Scarlet light, smell of fire. Air contaminant sirens shrilled. In the strobe of alarms it was hard to see one small red boy leap up the wall, smash in the rusty grate and disappear into an air-shaft.
>> 
>> "Frag it!"
>> 
>> She slung the rifle-strap around her belly, flapped to a com-point. "Cap'n, the kid's out again!". Slammed the switch shut on the torrent of abuse which followed and broke out the extinguisher one more time. "What's he set fire to this time? We cleared out the swodding room...."
>> 
>> Keyed off the fire-alarm; a moment of rosy pinkness when both sets of lights came on at once, then white light again and she could see.
>> 
>> "Chuuba!"
>> 
>> It was the Wookie, Taksharra, his fur ablaze, teeth chewing the air as he roared in anguish. He lurched towards her - a swipe of taloned paw - mad, stupid with pain. If she'd had the blaster in her hands she would have fired. Instead she opened up the nozzle and hit him in the face with a stream of foam.
>> 
>> "Kkkiiiii!"
>> 
>> "Shut up, Sithspawn, I'm trying to help!"
>> 
>> A dance in the narrow corridor, while he tried to claw her and she flitted out of his grasp, circling, until he was completely covered in foam. When his footing was slippery and he couldn't see her, she kicked him in the face, sent him tumbling. "Kid's got taste, Taks - you fragging deserve it."
>> 
>> How'd I get with this stupid _crew?_
>> 
>> It was a disturbing thought, that someone was willing to pay her enough to make staying with these tubeworms worthwhile. Someone had asked for her, personally. _Someone with a hell of a lot of money. Just paying the damages from this kid'll set him back twenty k and counting...._ Disturbing, because she didn't like the idea of that kind of power knowing about her. But then again, there really was serious money in it.
>> 
>> Taks was whimpering on the floor. Warra thumbed the com open again, "Send a medi-droid up here, we got a burn victim. You found him yet?"
>> 
>> Cap'n Jack had taken some happy pills, even his voice was smiling. "The Seeker's on it now. We'll have him in no time, but even if we don't, no problem. He's still on board. What can he do?
>> 
>> Unbelievable! "What can he do? Lil' Kirru's killed two of your crew already and maybe a third. What does it take, Cap'n Jack?"
>> 
>> Happy hadn't lasted long. She took a certain satisfaction from that. "Get your slimy blue butt up here, y'ugly freak!"
>> 
>> _Tubeworms, all of them._
>> 
>> "Send me the seeker output and I'll get on to it, Cap'n. Oh, and someone's going to have to mend the kid's door again."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Kirru inched forwards in the darkness. The airvent was vertical against the ship's artificial gravity; he couldn't stop here. His hands hurt - the Wookie had beaten them with a strip of engine-coil. The palms left a track of liquid on the inside of the vent and slid treacherously, so he had to brace himself by elbows against the walls. But his elbows had been stepped on, twisted. Metal caught on his back where an earlier burn had been sliced through by the Wookie's claws. Plasma and blood soaked the shirt that his mother had embroidered for him, in other days, when he was someone else.
>> 
>> He reached the lip of the vent, tumbled over, and lay in pitch black, hoping that now he might be able to get one instant of rest without fear. One instant. It was all he could let himself believe in. He tried to curl into a ball, but the vent was not big enough, denying him even the comfort of his own warmth. He had forgotten how to cry.
>> 
>> _I want it to stop._
>> 
>> It hadn't even started out personal with them. They beat him like it was a duty, and yes they enjoyed it, and yes they laughed, but it was still like it didn't matter that it was _him_. It could have been anyone.
>> 
>> _But I'm not just anyone. I'm going to be a Jedi._
>> 
>> He could still wipe them off the face of the universe. He could still win. He would teach them!
>> 
>> _I'll make it stop!_
>> 
>> The pain was good. It made him angry, and the anger made him strong. He got up, crawled forward _I'll kill them all!_
>> 
>> Air movement to his right, a familiar, metallic voice. A faint rattle as of delicate claws dragging on the vent's surface. The black droid had joined him.
>> 
>> It was a spy for them, he'd learned that much. Cold, too cold to touch with fire, and too swift-moving to catch, he had begun to think of it as his own dark angel; almost protective, almost reassuring. He wanted to talk to it, confide in it, but he wasn't that much of a child any more. He just shrugged and kept going towards the engines.
>> 
>> Crim was in the engine room, pacing. Kirru recognised the stubble of dyed blue hair, the glitter of flashy jewellery. A faint reek of liquor and boredom came from him; a dangerous combination.
>> 
>> Kirru wanted to touch the engines, study them. They were, he knew, far more complex than the swoop's had been. Just putting his hand on them would help him understand them better. And that would let him destroy them. He warmed himself on the thought of the fireball. Just briefly, at the moment of his death, he would make a new star.
>> 
>> But first he had to get a closer look at those engines, figure out how they worked.
>> 
>> _Dad would know._
>> 
>> The thought threw him as if he'd run into a wall. He still had a father!
>> 
>> In just over two months, Kirru's father would return to Est Valley expecting joy and would find emptiness. Even the bones would be gone by then. He wouldn't know that Kirru hadn't died with his mother. He wouldn't search, but he would weep. The thought of his father - unmanned, on his knees in the ruined house, crying - twisted Kirru's gut. _Daddy!_
>> 
>> Last year's memories came back in a rush of cold that tingled his battered skin. Genju racing down from the lookout point flushed with speed and self-importance "They're coming!"
>> 
>> A scramble for best clothes; Mother running from ice-house to oven with arm-loads of food; the droid calmly setting out treats on the table; Jenji's new dress hanging from her shoulder half fastened; Auntie Miri wiping dirty faces and shouting at everyone.
>> 
>> Fast as ski's could take him to the road, and the breathless wait - an expectation almost too good to end. Then the first tauntaun rounded the corner. He jumped and yelled with happiness like all the cousins, skid down the hill like flying, straight into his father's arms.
>> 
>> His dad tossed him into the air, didn't catch him. He came down in a breakfall, rolled to his feet, triumphant, and they both laughed, Dad's eyes shining with pride.
>> 
>> Dad reached into the pocket of his parka, drew out something concealed in his big fist. "Don't tell your mother. It's our secret." And pressed the training tape into Kirru's outstretched hand.
>> 
>> Memory wouldn't stay there. It segued into the tape crushed under his mother's foot, and then his mother, faceless in the ruins of the house.
>> 
>> Anger offered itself again, but he couldn't quite touch it, as if his father had reached out and brushed his fingers across the backs of Kirru's beaten hands. _Daddy!_
>> 
>> "D'you really wanna die?"
>> 
>> The ugly voice slapped him out of his reverie. Ancestors! He must be tired - he'd phased out, not heard her arrive. She was just there, speaking his thoughts as if she'd violated even his mind.
>> 
>> "Get out of my head!"
>> 
>> No point in denying his presence - the droid was there, telling them exactly where he was.
>> 
>> "Kid, I don't read minds. I'm just not brainless." She floated slightly away from the vent, so her gas-filled belly wouldn't block the light.
>> 
>> _I bet *she's* flammable._
>> 
>> Unlike the huge stomach, her arms were all muscle, delicately keeping the blaster-rifle lined up on his face, compensating for her wing-beats and her slow drift to the side.
>> 
>> Was she taunting him with the empty room? Did she think he was stupid? _Crim's not gone. He's just flattened against the wall to the side of the vent, waiting for me._
>> 
>> "Lil' Kirru puts Taks in the med-bay and heads straight for the engines. It doesn't take a genius...." Her trunk-like nose curled. He didn't know what that meant; amusement? Eagerness?
>> 
>> "We all saw the recording of what you did with Micar's swoop." She gestured with one hand, stretching it out as he had done, "Boom! And now you wanna do the same with the ship. Makes sense, right?"
>> 
>> "You can't stop me."
>> 
>> But she had, just by being the first person on this crew who had talked to him, like a person.
>> 
>> "Nah, I know. But the question is, d'you really wanna die too?"
>> 
>> Or perhaps it was Dad who had stopped him, by holding out the promise of a home; somewhere to go back to.
>> 
>> "You killed my mum."
>> 
>> The long gash of a mouth curved into unpleasant sympathy, "Ah, baby, you wouldn't have wanted to watch how _they_ were gonna do it."
>> 
>> "I hate you." Once, uttering those words had been the worst thing he had ever done. Now he heard them with contempt. _She's making you into a child again. Making you weak._ But it wasn't her, not really. It was Dad.
>> 
>> "Yeah, I know." She turned her head, looked at the wall, "Get lost, Crim."
>> 
>> Crim's intake of breath mirrored his own - shocked, puzzled - what was she trying to do to him? Earn his _trust_?!
>> 
>> "Capn's gonna hear 'bout this."
>> 
>> "Big deal!"
>> 
>> The blue-haired man shot him a look of disappointment as he sauntered to the door. With his presence gone the air of the room was easier to breathe.
>> 
>> "Listen, kid." Warra had turned back to him, "Whatever the client wants you for - and I don't know what it is - it's damn sure not gonna be on this ship."
>> 
>> "So?"
>> 
>> "So you wait til you get off. Then you blow us up."
>> 
>> Of course. He hadn't been thinking that far ahead. He had assumed they were going to kill him, when they'd finished playing. _Assumptions are deadly,_ said his tapes, _But so is listening to your enemy._ "Why are you telling me this?"
>> 
>> "Hey," she chuckled like someone gargling snot, "I'm stalling for time. It's a Jedi thing."
>> 
>> She was psychic, she must be. "What do you know about the Jedi?"
>> 
>> Even with the snout and the tusks her face could express smugness perfectly. "I've met a couple. I've even survived one."
>> 
>> He itched to kill them, but it would be nice to be alive to enjoy it; nice to jump up and down and laugh at them as they burned. Whatever else the rest of his life might be, it would be a victory over them. _She survived a Jedi, but she won't survive me._
>> 
>> "I'm not going back in that room."
>> 
>> "That's OK. I reckon you've been 'processed' enough. Stay where you are and study the engines. It's not gonna be long."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Crim jabbed him in the back with his bow-caster. A technique of disarmament suggested itself _If an idiot gets that close_ , but now was not the time. _Only a little longer, then BOOM, Crim!_
>> 
>> Out of the porthole Kirru could see, rising up into the ship's lights, the curved, silver form of an elegant liner, beautiful as the wings of sea-birds in the morning sun.
>> 
>> For a moment the sight seemed to make everything worthwhile. It had an eerie _rightness_ to it, which promised him deliverance. It was hard to keep a grip on the engines, on the weakness he'd worked out, as his anger died into awe.
>> 
>> A transport tube quested out like a leech, fastened itself on the airlock. The outer door cycled open.
>> 
>> _Is it right that whoever ordered all of this should have a ship like that? The guy who owns it; he's the one who killed my mum; he's the one who beat me; who ordered me to be 'processed'._ Kirru goaded himself into fury, but it was an effort. He was so glad just to be getting away.
>> 
>> Kirru's angel, the black droid, came up behind him as if to say goodbye.
>> 
>> The inner door opened - grubby airlock and then a pristine tunnel, lined with soft white carpet. A silver protocol droid with strangely misshapen hands came forward to take Kirru's elbow.
>> 
>> He stepped off the pirates' ship. _Only 'til the other airlock closes._ Held the engines and his rage apart and gritted his teeth in impatience. _Then you're carbon, all of you._
>> 
>> The modified fingers tightened on his arm, breaking the skin. A needle slid out of the enamelled nail.
>> 
>> "Fell for it again, kid." Warra's distorted voice mocked him as his universe spun, as the corridor came up and nudged his cheek. She was upside down, or he was. "When you wake up we'll be the other side of the galaxy. But hey, you're still alive."
>> 
>> Shame choked off his air, or perhaps it was the drug. It felt like shame.
>> 
>> "Don't be sore," she said, chuckling, "Only you're no Jedi."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> The night side of Ryloth scintillated with sprays of crystal radiance as they came down - ship's lights scattering from plumes of frozen atmosphere. _Yeah, bathe me in diamonds!_ Warra thought, hyped with tension as she braced against the final jolt of landing.
>> 
>> Carbon-dioxide flashed into vapour around the engines, fell back in a swirl of snow. The forward spots lit a greasy river of nitrogen, steaming as it slid through the dry ice. Raising a fog, the 'Lucre' settled up to her belly in solid air. Frigid winds curled the mist away in shapes like pleading wraiths.
>> 
>> When the ship's lights snapped off the cabin was left grey with the non-dawn of the distant terminator: the one place on Ryloth where life could exist.
>> 
>> "What a skuz place!" Captain Jack's skin was as shadowed as the landscape - these kids had him hitting the chemicals too often for his own good.
>> 
>> Warra thought about her end-of contract bonus, and keeping him sweet. "Cap'n?"
>> 
>> His temper had worsened too, "What?!"
>> 
>> "How much do they charge for pure oxygen these days?"
>> 
>> "More'n it's worth."
>> 
>> "Right here they've got an atmosphere of it. Why don't you get the 'mech to siphon some into the tanks? We could sell it off on Boulder; make a killing."
>> 
>> Ora turned her head with angry grace, long fingers stalling on the latches of her suit. She gave Warra a sweet, toothy smile while the wormlike ends of her head-tails flicked out the word 'Bitch' in Tiw'lek sign language. "This's my planet you're talking about. We're gonna steal my people's air?!"
>> 
>> Jack liked that idea - his skin stretched over his cheekbones in a smile that was increasingly skull-like. "Get on with your work, girl-flesh. We take what we want on this ship."
>> 
>> To keep him under any control at all Warra had to constantly feed him with the thought of his own power - even if it meant abuse for the crew. As long as they stayed together until her time was served. The truth was, of course, that Jack had about as much power in this business as Kirru had. He just didn't have the same brains as the boy. Even at ten Warra thought grudgingly, Kirru was twice the man Jack was. _Poor little bastard! I wonder what does happen to them._
>> 
>> It wasn't her place to wonder that. Infact it made the webbing of her feet twitch to think of it. So much secrecy was going on; knowing anything must be bad for your health. _Forget the speculation, get on with the work._ "Is the Seeker out?"
>> 
>> "Couple'a seconds ago," Depper answered, pushing away his fall of blond dreadlocks with a greasy hand. "Should get the twins in minutes, if they're still living where they were."
>> 
>> Where they were when the Jedi came to assess them for their Force potential; when the Jedi offered to take them off their parents' hands and turn them into heroes.... Sometimes it really was hard not to think. _This guy with the money? He knows who the Jedi visited, who they accepted and who turned them down. He's got access to Jedi records!_
>> 
>> That was disturbing in itself. Like the movement of the swamp when a dianoga passes under the surface, the Jedi were a threat Warra had grown used to; she'd assessed it, she could live with it. But now she knew there was something else down there - something that didn't make a ripple. _And it knows about me!_ Chuuba! Thinking was too scary. Best just do the job.
>> 
>> Not far from the bank of the nitrogen river stood a black volcanic outcropping - stark as an exclamation against the white. In the melted reflectivity of the stone a cave showed as an irregular area of matt darkness. It was perhaps one hundred metres away.
>> 
>> "You sure this entry is abandoned?"
>> 
>> "Yeah," Depper creased his brow over a lengthy report on screen. "Something about the ritual murder of clan chiefs coupla years ago means this area's..." he slurred the word, uncertain, "Tabu now. They use nine zero nine three for dry ice mining these days."
>> 
>> "Good...Cap'n?"
>> 
>> "Yeah, yeah, just do it."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> The floating holocam showed darkness for the trip across Ryloth's nightside - it hadn't been designed for such a temperature - but inside the lift it warmed into life, and she saw the flick, flick of descending lights, the decayed brown of oxygen ravaged metal.
>> 
>> Swearing quietly she turned it round - _Undergods be thanked for autocontrol!_ to watch the team struggling out of their heat suits, dumping the capture-sacks and thermals on the ice-slick floor.
>> 
>> Ora preened in front of the camera, though she had a strange, wistful look at the back of her painted eyes. _I hope it's safe to let her loose on her homeworld._
>> 
>> Crim and Depper taunted each other over the stupidity of their prosthetics, but in a crowd - and wearing hooded cloaks - Warra thought they would pass as Tiw'lek for the few seconds that mattered.
>> 
>> "Listen," she growled over their headlinks, "This end of the tunnel the atmosphere's still mostly oxygen. No-one even thinks of using a blaster, OK?"
>> 
>> "Oh yeah, we're so _stupid_ we hadn't thought of that." Crim's voice filled the cabin with accusation, but he moved his hand away from the weapon guiltily.
>> 
>> _Tubeworm._
>> 
>> For a long time the hunt was stiflingly boring. She watched them jog through miles of corridor, prompted them where to turn when the warren of passages became too tangled. She read the atmosphere reports, snacked.
>> 
>> "Middle fork, then first right. Slow it down, you're nearly there." The rough hewn tunnel became polished; black pumice fading to grey and then to a shimmery white stone with veins of purple and flecks of amethyst crystal. _Wonder how much that's worth?_
>> 
>> Now there were wide avenues joining on either side, streetnames carved on the walls, a blaze of lamps the shape of pendant flowers, and a bustle of passers-by. "OK," she said at last, "Your blasters are safe now, but keep 'em hidden and try an' look native. Seeker says the girls are in the marketplace, so you're gonna have plenty of witnesses if you frag this."
>> 
>> They came out into a cavern so huge it might have been above ground; dizzying with light and colour. Above them tiers and tiers of dwellings looked down, their doors bright with painted carving, their windows spilling mossy beards of greenery down the white walls. Flowers and faces were equally bright - the people's blue skin startlingly beautiful in this setting.
>> 
>> "Smells great," said Depper, and she worried a little that he was developing a talent for aesthetic appreciation, until she realised he was looking at a hot food stall. Actually the mushroom pancakes did look good.
>> 
>> "Stuff's made out of spores and fungus," she told him, "You're not a swodding tourist. Get on with the job."
>> 
>> Stalls opened on every side - rickety platforms loaded down with goods. Ora paused to finger a shining gauze fabric; cerise with opalescent roses, and Crim had to be pulled back from a display of throwing stars. "But hey, look. They fit in this spring-loaded gun. No power-pack, right, so weapon-sweeps wouldn't pick it up...."
>> 
>> Some shore leave would have been nice, Warra thought, trying to work out the relationship between where they were and the input from the Seeker. Close. They should be able to see the twins by now.
>> 
>> "Can it, crew! Pay attention."
>> 
>> "Shut up, freak."
>> 
>> And there the girls were, sitting together at a cafe, heads bent over neon yellow glasses, drinking something virulent through curly straws.
>> 
>> "I see 'em." Ora's voice slipped into uncertainty and Warra wondered how these two ugly little beings looked to her. Touching, she supposed - with their straight, childish figures and over-painted faces. Purses and purchases on the table in front of them, looking around with studied gazes that said 'Look, we're out on our own. We're independent. We're so grown up.'
>> 
>> _Aw, Sith, girl, don't go soft now._
>> 
>> The thinner of the two girls looked up even before Ora had begun to approach. Were children supposed to look that drawn? And the fatter scanned the crowd, nervously. Crim and Depper were making their way round behind the table, but there was no way the girl should have been able to see that.
>> 
>> "Hello," Ora gave them her number twenty smile - innocent enquiry, "Are you Neeta and Edeen?"
>> 
>> "I'm Neeta," the thin one smiled, uncertainly. An unlovely purple shade blotched her cheeks, as if being spoken to in public was too embarrassing to bear. Edeen grabbed her bag in silence, stuffed various small items inside.
>> 
>> "Neeta!" This was the voice of a child who'd been taught not to talk to strangers. It was ignored.
>> 
>> "Nice to meet you." Ora held out her hand. Neeta took it for a brisk, reassuring handshake. Then she looked at her palm, puzzled. There must have been just time for her to register the final grey smears of sedative being absorbed into her skin. _Just_ time, before she sagged, unconscious, onto her chair.
>> 
>> "Pick her up."
>> 
>> Crim emerged from the crowd, hoisted the drugged girl into his arms before she slipped from the seat. At the same time Depper was pushing the barrel of a blaster into Edeen's ribs.
>> 
>> "My friend's got a blaster too - you do anything we don't tell you and your sister dies."
>> 
>> "You're not going to get away with this! My dad'll come after you."
>> 
>> Depper sniggered; "Oh, excuse me! I'm so scared I think I'll wet myself. Now shut up and walk."
>> 
>> They made a touching picture - the beautiful Tiw'lek mother, her husband carrying his sleeping daughter, the friend with his arm wrapped around the other sister's shoulders. People smiled at them as they passed.
>> 
>> _Just maybe,_ Warra thought, _Just maybe they're gonna get this one right!_
>> 
>> "How's it goin'?" Jack looked over her shoulder. Her back tensed to receive a blow.
>> 
>> "Good," she said, hardly daring to believe it.
>> 
>> They had left the cavern, were back in the tunnels, walking less casually now, smiling, telling themselves how good they were. "Easiest 40 thou I ever made!" But Warra didn't like seeing Edeen conscious. Didn't like the calculation on the girl's face.
>> 
>> "Drug the other one too," she told them over the mike.
>> 
>> "Chuuba! Warra, you're not carrying them - and the other one's a fat slag."
>> 
>> Tunnels tangled in the darkness around them. Edeen had begun slapping the walls as she passed. _Tap,_ pause, _tap, tap_. "Stop her doing that!"
>> 
>> "No-one can hear."
>> 
>> The girl's eyes had emptied and her lips parted, showing a fringe of spiked teeth. There was a blankness in her expression that Warra had only seen before on the faces of Jedi: The non-presence of self, while they reached out to the Force.
>> 
>> "Drug the little bitch right now! She's doing something."
>> 
>> Perhaps the panic in her voice finally spurred them. Ora moved forward.
>> 
>> _Tap. Tap. Tap._ An echo out of the deep. The crew swung round, torches making crazed shadows as they swept blank tunnel mouths. Something was moving there in the darkness, making a sound like the clicking of immense pincers.
>> 
>> Faceted stone reflected torchlight, and _moved_.
>> 
>> _Tap. Tap. Tap._ It came into the passage on feet like spears. A massive, heavy, scorpion-like creature with skin of polished stone. A _lylek_.
>> 
>> Time stalled; the crew's mouths dropped open. Then Edeen stamped on Depper's foot, twisted away from him and ran, straight at the ravenous monster.
>> 
>> Instantly the lads drew their blasters. "NO!" Warra yelled, "You'll blow yourselves up - the oxygen!" And by that time Edeen was past the creature, sheltered on the other side.
>> 
>> There was a clicking and tapping all around her; shapes moving like ants on a trail. None of them seemed to sense the girl, their mandibled heads swayed as they closed in on the pirates.
>> 
>> "The monsters are going to eat you," A line from childish play wound out of the darkness in a sweet little voice, "And when you're all gone I can pick up Neeta and go home."
>> 
>> _I should have let him buy the star-thrower,_ Warra thought, distractedly, while she yelled down the com. "Cut your losses. Bring one. RUN!"
>> 
>> They didn't need telling twice.


	7. Chapter 7

The light still shone in Obi-Wan's hands, but there was a huge darkness wakening inside him. He could feel it blocking his throat, swelling inside his chest, so that his labouring heart had to battle not only the inadequate air but also his own grief.

_I'm not going to think it. I won't say it._

Beside him, Dena gasped, sprawled against the wall, sweat and dirt striping her face with lines of gold and black. She was dying, and it was his fault.

Despair squirmed once more in his stomach. The layer of discipline restraining it was very thin now. If he said the words it would come out and devour him. Then he wouldn't be able to stop crying. He didn't want to cry in front of Dena; didn't want to die in front of Dena, still trying to pretend he was strong.

"He's...not coming." There - now he'd betrayed even himself. Discipline shattered, and for a moment the words themselves obsessed him, clawing their way out like monsters. "He's not coming. He's _not coming_!"

His voice broke, hatefully, making him feel stupid as well as abandoned. _He never wanted me. He wants to get rid of me. He wants me to die..._

Maddeningly, just as he had begun to wallow in his misery, a calm, Jedi voice in his mind said _You're only panicking because you can't breathe. It's a common reaction. Focus._ But he didn't want to focus. _How can I focus!_ " _He's not coming!_ "

"Aah... _coff_...Shut up!" Dena rolled her head sideways against the wall, fixed him with wide, furious eyes as she struggled to breathe. "Use the comlink."

He coughed, gasped - it hurt so much! "I tried it. He...won't answer."

"Try it...again!"

Not enough air to argue or explain. He thumbed the comlink on and heard again that terrible, reproving silence at the other end. "Master?"

_I shouldn't have to ask! If I have to ask it's as bad as him not coming at all. I'd have to live, knowing. Knowing that he really wants me to die._

There were other griefs behind that one, lurking in its shadow like a pack of rancors behind its leader. Those he could still fight down, and he did, even though it felt as if his ribs were breaking, trying to keep them in.

"Then...aah...use the Force."

 _I shouldn't have to ask!_ It was hard to think past his personal desolation, but he owed Dena this. Because, while Qui-Gon might abandon Obi-Wan, he would still dare anything to save the life of this woman he had never met.

_Does that make sense?_

_What? I really expect him to make sense?_

He breathed deeply, and it was like having a saw dragged through his lungs. Gather the Force, breathe in, and the agony would tear it back out of his hands. "It hurts too much!"

Why should Dena react as if he'd insulted her? She snapped upright, slapped him hard across the cheek, and - when she'd stopped wheezing - screamed at him. "What hurts? What _hurts_?! You just don't wanna try!"

"It doesn't...hurt you?"

"No," Dena turned to prop her forehead on the wall. Her sides pulsed like those of a trapped animal; her teeth were gritted as she spoke; and the tempo of her breathing speeded, speeded. "It aches, that's all."

 _Why?_ Obi-Wan wondered as a fresh wave of torment crested and swept him away. His arms spasmed and his hands opened by themselves. _Why should I feel it if she doesn't?_ His head felt thick as the Carbon-dioxide poisoning set in. He couldn't concentrate long enough to find an answer.

Like an omen, the river stone rolled from his palm and fell into the dust. Deprived of the Force-presence of his touch it would fade soon, and darkness would come. He watched, waited, but it didn't fade. If anything its glow seemed to grow more radiant, more starlike than before, and the gold ornaments on the floor sent back the light in scattered flames.

_That should mean something._

"I want out!" Dena broke, hauling herself to her feet, staggering to the caved-in tunnel, scrabbling against the loose debris with her fingernails. "I want to get out. Let me out!"

"The Prowlers."

"I don't care!"

A stone tumbled to the floor. Dislodged mortar hissed and poured. She was going to bring the whole tomb down on them, working like that. "Wait."

He tried to run and sprawled - legs shaking and his chest on fire, "Aaah!" Dust softened his landing and filled his mouth. _I will not cry! I won't!_

Shaking his head, as if he could deny the pain's existence, he crawled to the ancient gold, pulled it back. Friction polished it into a circle of light. "Look." There were three Nimgoni waist-bands, big enough for him to pass his whole body through. He held one up against the tunnel mouth; "See?"

Her eyes were dull and stupid. She looked at the wall for a long time before an idea stirred there, but then she nodded.

He lurched back for his river-stone. _Why?_ As his hand hovered over it he could see the blood moving through his veins. It was almost too bright to look at. _Why should I want it, now?_ But he reached down, felt its smooth warmth, and tucked it away in his tunic. _Because._

In the ghost-light of his sabre Dena looked already dead - a moving corpse. His own hands were pallid as a ghost's. For a moment he didn't know why he was still trying, and the simple answer came with a bleak triumph; _It's easier to act than to feel._

"Ready?" When she nodded he leant forward, cut a deep circle in the boulders and scree of the collapsed tunnel. Fumbling, eager, Dena drove the gold band into the gap. Rocks shifted, settled. Obi-Wan whined as excitement knifed between his shoulders.

"It's holding!"

Sapphire flashed as the sabre cut the stone from inside the bracing circle, then Obi-Wan shovelled the debris out with his grazed hands. He had gone perhaps a metre when Dena pushed him aside. "Architect's...instinct. Another prop."

Much more difficult to achieve the manoeuvre now that they were both squashed into a metre of unstable rock. The second band scraped the first as Dena pulled it forward. Pebbles pattered down in a rain of soil. "Oh gods!"

The perfect circle of gold flattened across the top. It was coming down! Obi-Wan lost a moment, as though, mercifully, he had been released from feeling anything. Then the movement stopped and he was free to remember the instant when he thought he would die. "Force!"

Somehow they managed the second brace, Dena in front now, passing the rubble back. At last she paused, lying on her stomach, her head resting on a boulder, her mouth against a chink in the stone. For a while she gasped like a fish and then looked back. "I can breathe!"

"Let me." He tried to pass her - was that a small current of fresh air that felt so beautiful on his face? Surely they hadn't dug that far yet? And was that...noise beyond the barrier?

"No we'll just..."

 _Tchssss. Scrabble. Crack!_ A rock fell away from them - the sabre lit utter darkness; a hole. Wind tangled Obi-Wan's cloak as a long, fingered limb snaked through the gap and grabbed Dena's wrist.

"NOoooo!" She screamed, flailing, kicking the wall. More tentacles were pulling down the last obstruction, writhing inwards. They got her by the throat, pulled. Instantly Obi-Wan saw again Gemmer's death - the inhuman strength wrenching apart head and body - blood spraying in a sheet across the sky.

" _No!_ He squirmed forward, caught at her ankle, but couldn't get past in the tiny space. She was jerked out of his grip, dragged, still screaming, out of the dim circle of sabre light, away into the darkness. "Dena!"

 _Oh Force! Oh, Force! I've failed her too_ He slapped the despair down angrily, pulled himself forward, slid through the final obstruction and felt the tunnel walls slide with him. A rumble began - the groan and scrape of moving boulders, _ssh_ and patter of pouring sand. Above him, the roof sagged, and in front of him it began to fall. _Not like this! I don't want to die like this!_

Loosened rock hit him, and hit again. The new air was full of soil, smothering. _How d'you do the Force shield?_ but the pain hadn't gone and even if he had known the technique he didn't think he could have used it.

In the instant before death he watched the roof fall, and fall, _Not here! I want to die in the light, in the air!_. And it stopped.

Paralysed with shock he lay and saw the boulders poised in mid flight, the very dust stationary on the air; the falling building being held up by....

Being held up by the Force.

Inside, his soul twisted, and he didn't know who he was or what he felt, but his body was wiser than that. It wormed through the narrow gap, and urged him forward down the dark tunnel towards the far off light.

 _Dena's out there. And..._ hard to frame the words even in his head _My master._ Even now they were probably fighting for their lives against the Prowlers. He had to help them.

With a burst of speed - encouraging how fast his strength had returned now he could breathe - he skidded out of the tunnel, lightsabre at the ready. But his battle-stance weakened and the sabre lowered, and eventually he thumbed it off altogether; stood in the garish sunset panting as awe earthed through him like lightning.

Qui-Gon Jinn stood in a circle of Prowlers. They were solid crimson, revealed in all their horror, but it was impossible to look at them once you saw the man. Power spilled from his very stillness, and his hard face was smooth and serene with the glory of the Force. Obi-Wan had never seen his Master look so much like a king - a king of legend with monsters as his bodyguard, and splendour in his hands like a light.

Obi-Wan had never dreamed that the quiet, introverted man could look like this. Everything he'd suffered went away under a wave of desire; _I want to be him._

Dena - a prisoner in the careful grip of a Prowler tentacle - gave a strangled chuckle at the sight of Obi-Wan. Her eyes were shining, and she managed to be open mouthed and smiling at the same time.

At the sound of her voice Qui-Gon turned to her, came forward - how tall he was! - to look down into her face. "Give back what you've stolen."

She wilted under the reproach of his soft voice, bowed her head wordlessly, and took out of her pockets the gems and small gold flowers even Obi-Wan had not seen her collect. He knew what they ment to her - food for her family, care for Gemmer's baby, some kind of purpose for Blue's death - so he knew why she hesitated before giving them up.

"I will not betray the trust of these creatures," Qui-Gon said to her, reasonably, "You will give back everything that belongs to them."

Still the tone was gentle, but when she looked up Obi-Wan could see that Dena was afraid. She handed the wealth over with trembling fingers.

"Thank you," Qui-Gon smiled as though he understood the sacrifice she had just made. He put a hand on her shoulder, possessively, turned back to the Prowlers, "But now she leaves with me."

Dena's captor loosed her instantly, and flattened on the ground in obeisance. It wasn't a mind trick - it was something deeper than that - an atavistic desire to be commanded, perhaps, if only a worthy authority could be found. Despite his training in objectivity, Obi-Wan felt the compulsion too. _How easily he could make us all worship him. If he chose._

"Obi-Wan?" He felt the hand on his arm with a complex of emotions that filled his already aching chest with anguish, looked up into his master's face, and was stunned. There was very little human left in the expression. It was as if the Living Force itself was inhabiting the body of Qui-Gon Jinn, looking out of the aquamarine eyes. The depth of that union made Obi-Wan uneasy. _Who's in charge here? Him or it?_

"Master?"

"Come on."

That was all? That was 'Welcome back. I've been worried about you. I'm sorry I took so long'...? Obi-Wan waited, but that did seem to be it; Master Jinn was already walking away, Prowlers on either side like a royal escort.

Dena came up beside Obi-Wan and they fell into step together. "This is the guy you were telling me about? The one with the emotional problems?"

He had to laugh - the sound echoing strangely around the city of tombs. "He's not usually this...awesome."

"I'm gonna talk to him about it."

"No!" Force - teach him to talk about his problems even when he thought he was dying. _She's going to talk to Qui-Gon about my insecurity? Like a...like a *creche mother*!_ The embarrassment would kill him. "Dena, don't."

She laughed too, and the wind carried it back over the spilled gore - uncertain if it was a blasphemy or a benediction.

At the wall Dena scrambled over eagerly, but Qui-Gon paused, turned back, and Obi-Wan dithered, torn between freedom and duty. Eventually he came up to stand behind his master, but with his calves pressed against the sacred barrier. From this position he could fight or flee, if needed. When he found out what bargain Qui-Gon had struck with the monsters for his release he could challenge it, if he had to. He still had the hilt of his sabre in hand.

Qui-Gon bowed to the Prowlers, smiling. "May the Force be with you." Then he straightened, spread out his arms, and the monsters crowded in on him, touching, pulling, one even climbing him, pressing its mouth to the cut on his cheek.

"Master?" Obi-Wan took a step forward, horrified. A thought filled his lungs with boiling lead, making him stumble - _Did he offer himself in exchange for me?_

But the creatures were disengaging, falling away, their camouflage re-established, disappearing like wind-blown sand. He blinked back the tears of agony _What's the matter with me? Why does it still hurt?_ and Qui-Gon caught his elbow to steady him. The big hand was shaking slightly. "Go."

Three people were waiting beyond the barrier; sitting in a vile parody of a landspeeder. Two Nimgoni and a girl with a pinched face and eyes that glittered unsteadily.

 _How long has it taken?_ Obi-Wan recognised the symptoms with a blend of humour and jealousy, _With a peace-treaty in tatters and an enemy that could devour the galaxy, he's still got time to collect a family?! That's all we need._

But the speeder was welcome. He started toward it, and Dena's voice stopped him between footfalls.

"No, I'm OK. I've got people waiting for me."

They'd been through a lot together, and yet it was Master Jinn who thought to worry about her now. Feeling both guilty and impatient Obi-Wan turned back, trying to think of something to say. She saw the movement, gave him a fierce grin. "Jedi Master? I wanna talk to you about the kid."

No! She was really going to do it! _Dena, shut up!_

Qui-Gon inclined his head, watched her face intently. He seemed even less talkative than usual, and - now that some of the dazzle of his power had faded - Obi-Wan could see that he looked rough. His hair, torn from its tie, was full of dirt and hung around a face that was bruised everywhere and bleeding.

"The kid thinks you hate him." She really said it! And Oh it sounded dreadful in those words. Master Jinn's brows drew together in a frown, but what did it mean? Anger? Disbelief? Obi-Wan couldn't feel what his master felt - their bond was obscured by this hideous pain in his chest.

"From what he's told me, I don't see that." Dena went on. She'd lost her smile and looked now like someone paying for an expensive gift. _She's not trying to embarrass me. She thinks she owes me this._ But he _was_ embarrassed. He wanted Qui-Gon's approval; his admiration. But all this would get him was pity. Why did she have to interfere?

"The thing is, I reckon you're a subtle kind of guy, and the kid doesn't do subtle. You might want to try being a bit more obvious with him."

And now she was dishing out advice to a Jedi Master! Unbelievable! Who did she think she was?

Qui-Gon nodded slowly, thoughtfully. _He's going to look at me._ Obi-Wan thought and felt himself flush in shame. He focused his gaze on his master's right hand - relaxing out of a fist. There was blood on the cuff.

"You lost friends?" Master Jinn's voice was unusually soft and hoarse. Obi-Wan looked up again, beginning to worry.

"Yeah. And now I gotta go tell their people." Dena's turn to look down, biting her lip. "All for nothing."

"Tell them that tonight the treaty will be signed. Tomorrow the Republic will begin bringing in food.

 _Oh, Master,_ Obi-Wan thought, seeing Dena's look of faith and pleasure with a sinking heart, _How could you lie to her like that?_ Because they were a million miles away from signing the treaty, and Qui-Gon Jinn knew it better than anyone.

"Thankyou." Dena's smile was soft as she slapped Obi-Wan on the shoulder and turned to go. He didn't have the heart to disabuse her, but it soured the end of something sweet to watch her walk away, taking that lie back to her family.

"Obi-Wan?" there was a plea in his master's roughened voice. He turned back and looked up into eyes surprised by weakness. "Obi-Wan, I'm going to.... Catch m...unh."

Astonished, horrified, he dived forward, took the great weight on his shoulders. Qui-Gon had no strength left, and he was _heavy_. Obi-Wan's knees buckled. He managed to roll, so that in falling Qui-Gon hit him and not the stony ground.

"Master?" And the gnawing in his chest disappeared, instantly.

Terrified by the feeling of wellbeing, Obi-Wan disentangled himself from the sprawled limbs, the huge, filthy cloak, and crawled up to his master's head. Qui-Gon's eyes were closed, but, even unconscious, his brow was lined with pain.

"Master Qui-Gon?" He took the heavy head on his knee - there was blood in the long hair, and he had to lean close to hear the laboured, shallow breathing. _That was his wound I felt all along. All the time I thought he wasn't coming for me..._

"What should I do?" _Damn you, don't leave me again!_ This should not be happening - Qui-Gon was invulnerable. Obi-Wan got captured, injured, hurt, and Qui-Gon rescued him - or not. That was the natural order of the universe. This was...just wrong.

Someone moved behind him, a bulk of colour in the growing dusk. "What happened to him?" he asked, looking up for reassurance, for someone to make sense of this for him.

"We don't know." In the twilight, he thought for a moment the speaker was a Prowler - it fitted the quality of nightmare so well. But it was the older of the two Nimgoni; a different, but related species. "We found him like that."

"I think he's bleeding inside." The girl, a spindly, strange figure in her malformed speeder, sounded just as emotionless as her companions. Instantly, he detested her.

 _There is no passion, there is serenity_. He avoided thinking about what she had said, tried to pick his master up, but could hardly raise the broad shoulders off the ground. "Help me!"

The Nimgoni woman slithered to his side, picked his fallen master up easily and carried him to the speeder. So strong! He remembered Nam Gillet; reaching out a tentacle, tearing apart the metal and cable of a droid's arm; all the lesser Nimgoni behind him, their skin vivid with madness. _And I ran away. Because I never thought they could hurt him._

"He said he'd help us."

Obi-Wan wanted to scream at them to shut up. _Why do you *do* this, Master? Why do you land us with these..._ But he needed their speeder. He had to get Qui-Gon to a hospital. If only he knew for certain that it was safe to go back.

"Then he will, if he lives." There was no-where else to go, and if he had regained his sanity - it seemed like such a long time ago - then perhaps so had the ambassadors. "Can you take us to the embassy?"

"They won't let us past security."

"They will, if we're with you."

He climbed into the speeder. Urgh...it smelled of burnt bone. The girl had just put a severed foot into the furnace. _Aw, Master, your friends!"_

There was very little room. Qui-Gon lay in the footwell, his face pushed into the sharp metal angle of the wheel-housing. The disrespect was hateful.

As the speeder started, pulled away - throwing out salt and smoke - Obi-Wan sat down by him, pulled him upright, so that his master's head lolled onto the relative comfort of Obi-Wan's shoulder. At the movement, Qui-Gon moaned, opening his eyes slightly. _Yes!_ He tried to focus on Obi-Wan's face, coughed - whole body heaving in Obi-Wan's arms - and said, faintly "Xan?"

"No." Obi-Wan went cold. Why did that hurt so much? _He thinks I'm his enemy?_ "No, it's me, Obi-Wan."

He could see the struggle for consciousness, like a drowning man reaching for the light. With his shields up against his master's agony he could finally touch the Force - focusing it into what he hoped was a beam of healing energy.

Qui-Gon stirred, brushed fingertips tentatively over the back of Obi-Wan's hand. "...sorry. How long...?"

 _Have I been unconscious?_ "Not long - a few minutes."

"Good." He made no attempt to sit up, accepting Obi-Wan's support with a simplicity that didn't seem quite dignified. "Where...?"

 _Are we going?_ "Back to the Embassy."

He nodded, pleased - _At least I got that right._ \- then shifted so that he could look up into Obi-Wan's eyes. The gaze was wary, tired, full of thought, and Obi-Wan looked away from it, ashamed.

"...you alright?" Drowning in his own blood, the man still had time to pity him. What could he say? _I thought you'd abandoned me._ Or _I'm not Xanatos. I'm not anything like him!_ Neither of those thoughts would bear exposure. So he said, "I'm worried about you," and felt like a liar even though it was true.

 

* * *

 

Beyond the salt-plain, in the wastelands of the city, the sound of their engine sent dark figures running for cover. The ride was bonebreaking over rubble and bomb craters, and Obi-Wan didn't know whether to rage or weep with anxiety. But when the roads smoothed, in the centre of town, the girl and the young Nimgoni brought out blasters and shot at every moving shadow, fear like a radioactivity between them.

Seeing the Embassy now, unmarked, smooth walls towering against a fire-stained sky; smelling the scent of gardens and fresh water behind the patrolling guards Obi-Wan saw for the first time how indecent his own privilege must seem to these people. No wonder they were bitter.

Two heavily armed Nimgoni soldiers intercepted them at the closed gates, floodlights behind them like an assault. "You can't come here. You..."

Simultaneously, with a speed that might have been funny - if he had any humour left - their colour shocked from jade to snow. Qui-Gon had pushed his hair out of his eyes and sat up. "We are the Republic ambassadors."

"But you..." The seasoned soldier drew her tentacles in defensively while she thought. Patterns flicked across her skin as she consulted with her colleague. "You may pass, of course. But who are these others?"

"They're my staff."

_Oh, Master!_

The mother of their small family now leaned forward - she had faded into the darkness hiding from the guns; "This soldier says you're dead, Qui-Gon. She said 'But I thought the Jedi were dead, we've got search parties out looking for their bodies.'"

With a sickening clarity Obi-Wan remembered the nightmares that had possessed him before he woke in the necropolis. The worst of them had not been dreams, but memories. It flashed on him again; a picture of the dry waterfall in the Temple, and Bruck, his old rival, falling to his death.

Xanatos had corrupted Bruck; taken him into a parody of the Master/Padawan relationship, used and cast him aside. And Obi-Wan had fought him. Hard pressed, clumsy, Bruck had slipped on the slimy footing, plummeted and hit the rocks at the bottom.

It was that picture which had recurred to Obi-Wan in his possession, except that this time, he had felt the kinaesthetic thrill of pushing him over. And when Bruck's neck broke, Obi-Wan had stood above the body and gloated; fulfilled, satisfied.

Untrue. Untrue! But just true enough to be horribly convincing.

"I wonder how many of the ambassadors saw themselves killing us," he said, shaking off the sickness, and received a smile full of mischief in return.

"Guilt is a powerful negotiator."

Qui-Gon turned back to the soldier. "What's your name?"

"Tre Kidix, Sir," she shifted uneasily, uncomfortable with being just a person, and yet, perhaps, a little flattered that someone saw she existed beyond her job.

"Tre, do you want to help the peace process?"

She went through several complex patterns of thought, which their own Nimgoni refused to translate, before saying "Yes, Sir. I see a lot out here that I don't like, so yes."

It was Qui-Gon's talent, Obi-Wan saw, that every relationship he formed became personal. He had begun speaking to a soldier, but now he continued speaking to a woman called Tre. _I can't do that. I don't think I even want to._

"Please don't report that we're back."

She recoiled at the request. He was, after all, asking her to risk her career. But he knew that; "You can say I mind-tricked you into it, but I'd rather not have to."

Another silent conversation. Then she said, "All right. As long as you promise to back us up if it comes to it."

"Of course."

They drove through the opened gates, waited until they shut. Qui-Gon had slumped back, and Obi-Wan could feel his master's muscles shuddering as he fought to breathe. How much had that display of control cost him? How much more could he stand? "Master?"

"Come on." Qui-Gon's arms shook as he pulled himself to his feet, "Time to come back from the dead."

"We can take the speeder!"

"Across the flowerbeds?" Qui-Gon shook his head slightly. His cheek twitched as if helplessly annoyed by his loose hair, "No. Want to...leave the blasters."

"Can you walk that far?"

"Have to."

"Then lean on me."

Their family had begun climbing out after them. "Just stay in the speeder," he said without thinking, then looked up in a reflex of fear - it wasn't his place to command. He prepared himself to apologise, but Qui-Gon just nodded, weakly, and leaned as much of his weight as Obi-Wan could bear on the boy's shoulder.

Even his Master's faint had not prepared him for that heartbreaking journey. They had gone barely half way before Qui-Gon stumbled, fell to his knees, bowed over, coughing up blood. It was unbearable to see this man so weak. It felt like being betrayed, as though some cherished illusion had been deliberately spoiled. He wanted to make it stop right now.

"Master, you can't do this." And he didn't need that look of reproach either! "You're the one who's always telling me to wait. We can do it tomorrow; you can rest now."

A faint headshake, Qui-Gon wiped bloody hands on his sleeve, braced himself to rise, panting. _I can't carry you, dammit!_

"Wait...for the moment. When it arrives...have to act, or lose."

Obi-Wan pulled him to his feet, caught an arm to steady him as he swayed - it was like trying to restrain a wookie - "But how do you know the moment is now? It might be tomorrow. I could go get meds; a stretcher. How do you _know_ "

A whole dialogue of frustration passed across Qui-Gon's worn face. _I suppose it isn't fair to ask him to talk._

"Just do," he said at last.

Sighing, Obi-Wan put his arm around his master's waist and began to drag him forward again. Qui-Gon was calling on the Force once more; his movements a little easier, the weight on Obi-Wan's supporting arm less crushing. They reached the balcony steps, Obi-Wan quailing at the sight of them. One stumble half way up and....

Gingerly Qui-Gon lowered himself to his knees again. "Go look. Then report. Don't be seen."

Easy enough. Though light mottled the balcony and the stone steps, the curtain of silverice blocked everything but moving darkness from the gaze of the ballroom. Just in case anyone was watching Obi-Wan climbed the vines - enveloping himself in perfume - and sidled up to the door, back pressed to the wall.

Centring himself - it was hard to do past his anxiety - he allowed the Force to bring the presences to his mind, to sharpen hearing and sight. Then he watched until disbelief and fury snapped his control, leaving him outside in the darkness again.

"They're all there." He leapt down silently onto the grass, "All acting like old friends."

Qui-Gon's closed eyes opened to slits as he heard the indignant tone of Obi-Wan's report. He nodded.

"Nam Gillet and the head of the Beta delegation, whats-his-name...."

"Arawn."

"Yeah. They've worked out a story about how we died in a riot! And they're on the point of concluding an alliance against the Republic. If the Senate doesn't buy their explanation."

It had appalled him to hear his own murder being dismissed so casually, being turned into a non-event; a political expedience. Then he caught his master's gaze and found it brimming with laughter.

"Well..." he answered the look, thinking about it, finding his own mouth tremble, "Well I suppose it is funny! But...!"

"Nam Gillet has nothing to lose now. If it gets out that he physically attacked a Republic ambassador his career is finished. And if they can agree on alliance they can agree on peace."

There was a brightness about Qui-Gon's face. Even without the fluent speech Obi-Wan would have guessed he was deep in the Force again. It was unwise. Horribly dangerous. With the Force he could drive himself well past his body's limits. He could push himself to the point of death and beyond - without even knowing it.

Obi-Wan bit the inside of his cheek. 'Have to act or lose'? He didn't feel the urgency, he didn't see the wisdom in taking this risk.

"But, Master, they're so scared. And they've come to this agreement now. And...."

Had Qui-Gon experienced the nightmares? Could he possibly appreciate how _real_ they were? Inside that room were at least a score of people who had already committed murder. They had stood over the dead bodies of himself and his master and gloated. And now they were dealing with it; covering their backs, lying. He bit down again. How could he explain?

"It might be inconvenient that we're still alive?"

Relief made him feel absurdly buoyant. Master Jinn understood. He'd already taken it into account in his plan. If he had a plan. "Yes."

They walked together up the steps and paused with the yellow light dappling their faces.

"We'll have to trust them," said Qui-Gon, his mouth quirked in a ghost smile.

"A bunch of politicians?" It was one of those moments - like the heartbeat before battle - when the bond between them was pure and right; a moment that made everything else unimportant. Obi-Wan knew exactly what Qui-Gon was going to say, and he said it;

"We're doomed."

Trying not to snigger, Obi-Wan parted the glimmering curtain and went in to face his murderers, at his master's side.


	8. Chapter 8

The curtain, closing behind them, shimmered sweetly - the noise prolonging itself as heads turned. Silence fell, and the last lingering ring and tremble of sound assumed lyrical importance as it faded.

As Qui-Gon walked forward, Obi-Wan had time to observe the glances - feel them flick from his scraped face to his Master's comprehensive bruises. In a moment of stillness small movements of guilt and horror imprinted themselves on his sight. Nam Gillet put down his stylus with slow care, membrane veiling the golden eyes. Wine spilled over Arawn's smooth, diplomat's hands and beaded in the split knuckles.

A glass shattered in the grip of one heavily-medalled general, and as she looked up Obi-Wan caught the hard hazel eyes and saw his own death reflected there.

 _This is so...bizarre._ Bizarre and frightening. From his own experiences Obi-Wan could guess what these people had done to him - inside their heads. It felt indecent, exposed, to stand in front of them now, feeling the impact of those fantasies.

Qui-Gon had found an unbroken chair, settled onto it. The robe billowed about his feet - letting out scents of salt, the mown-grass smell of Prowlers, the unmistakable reek of gore. He must have been aware of how Arawn's haunted gaze tracked the line of blood that slid from his cheekbone into his beard. He must have seen the soft, marred hands twist guiltily together, but he only smiled, at ease, and picked up the conversation as though he had been there all along. "So, what now remains between you and peace?"

The sound of suckers releasing their grasp with a ragged pop - Nam Gillet pulled his tentacles from the floor and eased them into positions of studied negligence.

 _Force, he's cold!_ Obi-Wan thought, amazed. No wonder Qui-Gon had wanted to move now. Given the speed of Gillet's recovery from the surprise of seeing them alive, by the morning he would have been as immovable as ever. He was recovering his poise even as Obi-Wan watched - the ashy undertone of his skin shrinking into a mottling of shadowed spots.

"Nothing has changed." He unveiled his eyes - an aurate flash - the only gilded thing left in the room's shabby grandeur, "Except that the alliance we were considering appears unnecessary."

Qui-Gon folded his hands together in the classic gesture of a Jedi Master deeply considering his next move. Obi-Wan found the posture reassuring - an echo of home - and moved up to place a hand on the back of his master's chair. Anchoring himself in all the strangeness. What would Qui-Gon say? Something diplomatic, obviously - the Council would expect no less.

"Nam Gillet, you are a cold, corrupt and self-centred fool. I would be pleased to see you removed from office and arrested for attempted murder."

Collective indrawn breaths. In the following silence a breeze stroked dim music from the silverice once more. _I can't believe he said that! What happened to 'speak the truth with tact'?_ He could see now what a weapon candour was - how it cut and shocked.

"But it doesn't have to be that way." Qui-Gon began speaking as soon as Gillet's flash of anger had faded, "You could come out of this as the saviour of your planet. As the man with the wisdom and vision to usher in a new age of peace."

He didn't smile, but Obi-Wan felt the twist of bleak humour as he went on; "A compassionate man, who saw that his people were fed, housed, healed. You could have their love, Nam Gillet." He had to explain why that was important; "Then you would no longer need the support of any lobby-group for your power. You would be free. You might even be able to become honest."

A spell between them: Qui-Gon could say all of this in public and still create privacy by his focus - intent and sincere. "If you can't seek peace for their sake, do it for your own."

Gillet's shade - a khaki of anger and uncertainty - pulsed through several subtle variations, and Obi-Wan began to regret the absence of their own Nimgoni. Translation would have helped.

"You can't accuse me of crime, Jedi. You said yourself that this madness was due to possession by an outside force."

"As I recall, you didn't believe me." Qui-Gon's innocent expression was rounded and guileless. _He's enjoying this!_

He leaned forward, to emphasise his next point, and gasped, jerking upright again - posture rigid and the amused eyes startled.

 _Go ahead; injure yourself worse!_ Anger pounced on Obi-Wan. Why couldn't Qui-Gon take better care? Why did he have to push himself so hard? Why was there nothing Obi-Wan could do to stop him?

In the centre of the conference table, water stood in a chipped blue jug. He could at least pour and offer a glass.

"Thank you." The hand looked steady, holding the tumbler, but the surface of the liquid shivered spasmodically. When Qui-Gon drank he left a tendril of blood in the water, uncurling like a strange flower.

"Circumstances have changed." Gillet's eyes reflected the tainted drink in a shimmer of colour, "I'm now convinced that we are innocent of deliberate harm."

"Good. Then you will, of course, release Ibhis LoXin immediately."

Obi-Wan registered a muffled gasp to his left and the lifted face of a young woman with hopeful, almond eyes. There was an answering twitch of appreciation from Arawn as the older diplomat smoothed back his fall of beaded braids; finally daring to be seen.

"That was an entirely separate incident. There's no evidence at all that Ibhis was possessed."

"None but my word, no." Qui-Gon tilted his head, glancing at the other diplomats, waiting for comments that didn't come, but clearly inviting discussion. "But your innocence also rests on my testimony. So I ask you; do you believe me or not?"

It could so easily have been a humiliating moment for Nam Gillet - a point on which he was forced to back down. Except that Qui-Gon presented the choice without triumph, as though he believed Gillet might have the strength to condemn himself out of principle. A strange compliment; and a meekness which offered no target.

Gillet pulled at the floor again, twice, with a noise like bursting bubblewrap, then snaked out a limb to slap at the comm-panel behind him. "Detention? The charges against Ibhis LoXin have been dropped. Release him at once."

The implications of this sank in slowly - Obi-Wan turned them around in his mind like pieces of a puzzle. When he saw how they fit together he didn't like the shape.

 _If I save my questions till later, will he answer them, or will he just come up with an excuse?_ The thought felt disloyal, but it remained a fact that Qui-Gon had not attempted to teach him _anything_ since the death of Xanatos.

Painfully aware of his breach of etiquette he came forward to kneel in the folds of wool beside Qui-Gon, tugged at a sleeve which was stiff with dried blood. "Master?"

Turquoise eyes flashed as they turned on him; reproach and something else. His throat tightened. _Yes I know I'm supposed to just watch and learn; but how can I, if I don't understand?_

A small drain on the Force allowed him to shift into hyperfocus on his master's face. Fierce regard beat on his own skin like a desert sun, as Qui-Gon watched him in the same way. They could now speak in utter silence, reading the small movements of face and lips. Obi-Wan excelled at this game - but he had never tried it with Master Jinn before. Afraid to try, perhaps - the scrutiny could be relentless.

//Master, I don't understand. You've just given away your best bargaining chip. In acknowledging Ibhis' innocence he forces you to testify to his own.//

Qui-Gon had abandoned the reproach - he answered neutrally, hiding his emotions, but not quite managing to smooth out the lines of pain around his mouth. //Only if he believes in my honesty.//

Intent as he was, Obi-Wan could hear the grate and sob of his master's breathing, see the tremor across his shoulders, almost invisible beneath the heavy layers of fabric. He wanted to abandon everything and drag the stubborn man into medical care - _Make him_ get better. But Qui-Gon was too perfect a Jedi to care about his own health, and if that was what he expected, Obi-Wan was not going to let him down. _If you want to ignore this, that's fine. I can do it too._

//With this,// Qui-Gon continued serenely, //We have achieved several things. Firstly, he's accepted that legally you and I are the only witnesses to his innocence. It will now be more convenient for him if we live than if we die. A small concession, perhaps, but worthwhile.//

Even in hyperfocus Obi-Wan couldn't see a smile - was it hurting that much? He returned it anyway, sure the last sentence had been a joke.

//Secondly,//

Around him Obi-Wan could feel an anxiety, an almost superstitious dread, growing in the diplomats who watched. To them this conversation must look like telepathy. A demonstration of the strange powers of the Jedi. _Unsettling for them to think we can read their minds. Who knows what secrets we might choose to reveal?_ Any another time Obi-Wan might have found a boyish pleasure in the glamour of it, but now he had no feeling to spare.

//By placing this importance on my word, he has to face the question of how trustworthy I am. If he can come to believe in me, he will feel less exposed about making this risky move. If he can't - then he can't be sure I won't condemn him anyway. His own anxiety will drive him. But...//

Obi-Wan gave himself a mental shake, paid attention, receiving the strong sense that everything Qui-Gon had just said was rationalisation on top of this one basic principle, //I will not blackmail him into this. True peace is not achieved by fear.//

Fear leads to anger. A basic Jedi tenet. And in the case of governments anger leads to war. Of course. Obi-Wan bowed his head to acknowledge understanding. When he looked up he was in time to see a ghost of agony flit across his Master's face. His 'perfect Padawan' act slipped. //Master?//

He stopped, breathed carefully, began again. //Please, won't this wait? It's not going to help, to...to risk yourself. Put it down for a while.//

There was the smile he'd imagined earlier - not quite relaxing the tense lines of the mouth. //Obi-Wan, if I stop now I could be unconscious for days. I'm sure you can calculate how many people would die in that time. I can't....//

Master Jinn's head bowed slightly, so that a fall of hair concealed his wince, but the intaken breath hissed through his teeth; too shallow, too laboured to sustain him. //Besides, I promised.//

Obi-Wan tried to stand, wanting to get back out of view until he had regained some control over his emotions, but Qui-Gon touched his shoulder to stop him. //Go fetch Im, Dek and Eryn.//

He took a guess. //The Nimgoni family?//

Too strong to completely hide, disappointment shadowed the Force-bright gaze, and he could guess the thought behind it - 'You didn't even ask them their names?' - as Qui-Gon nodded.

He kept his face averted to conceal the hurt - _I had other things to worry about!_ \- as he left.

 

* * *

 

"Oh, you finally remembered about us?"

The flesh-eating landspeeder looked particularly grotesque in the gardens; its furnace nodded over by climbing white _sitsi_ ; an iron wheel deep in the _hringbell_ bed and its tracks slicing through the finely raked gravel of the drive.

It was the girl who had spoken; she was lounging against the warm metal with her hands full of stolen flowers. In the watered green light of the security lamps her auburn hair was black and her skin white as a cloud - an unfinished sketch of a being.

He breathed a couple of times, to bring his temper under control, and thought about how to undo Qui-Gon's disappointment. "Look," he said, "We didn't get off on the right foot, did we? I'm sorry. I was worried about Master Jinn, and I still am. Can you excuse me for being a bit twitchy?"

She scowled at the flowers silently.

Folding his hands he bowed his most formal bow. "I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Jinn's apprentice. Are you Im?"

A look of derision between herself and the younger Nimgoni. _OK,_ Obi-Wan told himself firmly, _I guess that means they're thawing towards me._

"Im is my name." The older Nimgoni slid fluidly out of the speeder - she was also little more than a pattern of grey and black in the lamplight. "This is Dek and Eryn. They don't mean to be rude either; but we've had a lot to be anxious about too."

 _Humility is the foundation of accurate perception,_ he told himself, while anger showed a thin red line at the edge of his mind like a bud splitting. It was true that his focus had been achingly tight, _But I don't have time for this._

"Master Jinn would like you to come up and witness the negotiations."

"Us?" Eryn clutched the flowers - sweetness and black liquid oozing from between her fingers. She looked at her mother in panic. Im had faded into a suggestion of movement around her glistening eyes.

"You don't have to do anything, he just wants you there."

When he turned, they followed him. Dek slithered to his side and kept pace with him in a spider-like undulation which looked like a lot of effort. Dek had something to say - something that was important to him. "It must be great."

"What?" It occurred to Obi-Wan that this powerful creature was probably about his own age. If they had met in the Temple Dek would have been his yearmate, like Bant. Like Bruck. _Don't go there!_

The Nimgoni boy could not smile, but his skin was orange, in waves of madder and amber. What was that? _Envy_...?!

"Being a Jedi, of course."

Scarlet, sudden, the bud of rage bloomed in Obi-Wan's chest; unexpected, terrifying. It was all he could do not to storm off - find something fragile and break it, just _because_.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, it's great." It was impossible to stop this coming out with Dek, precisely because he was so afraid of saying it to someone else - someone important. "I don't dare make friends cos they _die_. Complete strangers try to kill me _all the time_. I've totally stuffed up the one relationship I am allowed, and you're trying to tell me how great it is?"

He quickened his pace - trying to get some privacy. Just a little space in which he could purge the anger into the Force. Dek was grey as a stormcloud behind him - his hurt like a slap between the shoulders. Eryn stepped on the hem of his cloak, luminous with indignation.

"You piece of slime! His dad died, d'you know that? My whole _family_ died. Yeah, you suffer too. We all suffer! But you can do something about it.... You want to know what despair is? Try being helpless, like us."

 _Helpless?_ She was right, Obi-Wan thought as his fists unclenched. Perhaps it was his own helplessness that filled him with fury. Because it still remained uncertain whether he was a Jedi at all. The council had not officially accepted him back into the Order since his defection on Melida/Daan.

This mission was part of his probation. A simple mission, a straightforward task, little more than a holiday. An undemanding time for himself and Master Jinn to test their commitment to his training, to re-establish their bond. An easy chore. Something he wanted badly, and it was falling apart under his hands, turning into blood and pain and terror just like everything else. _Why does this happen? What's wrong with me?_

Eryn's raised fist - still dark with pollen - was pulled away. "Ssh," said Im, reaching up to stroke Obi-Wan's back with a gentle tentacle, "Leave him be, Eryn. You know what he's going through. His father's very ill."

The breath went out of him leaving a frigid hollow, as if he'd stepped out into the vacuum of space.

 

* * *

 

"We will not have dry _vertebrates_ like you polluting the sacred seas!"

Tempers were high - skittery with guilt. Walking in on those flailing green arms was like swimming through weed filled water. Obi-Wan was struck by how sleek they all were, how fat and clean they must look to his charges. But what in the stars were they talking about?

Im parted the curtain behind him, getting the fiddly edges caught on her suckers, filling the room with a clamour of bells. At the looks of shock her colour swept into imitation of the walls - slightly battered coral. The camouflage was unimpressive, after the Prowlers, but a mark of terror so extreme that, reflexively, the glances dropped.

At the sight of her fear Qui-Gon started to get to his feet, fell back. A small cry of pain - shocking as a scream coming from him - transfixed the room. Im dived for the door.

"Please." Obi-Wan stopped her, aware that he was hugging his own ribs - the ache seeping through past his shields - _Shut up and do what you're told!_ "You're what this is all about. Let them see."

He went out and grabbed Eryn's hand, tugging; "Please, come in and," he bit his lip again, trying to show urgency, but not need, "Let me go to him."

Reassured that no-one was looking at them - they were watching Qui-Gon as he convulsed, fighting to breathe - they came in, and Obi-Wan was able to run to his master's side. Qui-Gon was curled over the agony in his chest, coughing in ragged spasms and whining at the pain. Obi-Wan grabbed his upper arms - the muscles strained and shuddering under his touch - tried to push him upright. "Master! Master look at me!"

The bent head shook, so Obi-Wan grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled. His heart faltered when he finally saw his master's face - strands of hair sticking in the sweat on his cheeks; skin pale as death and the lips blue. "Right that's it, you're going to the hospital _now_."

A calloused hand caught Obi-Wan's wrist, eased the hand away, the slitted eyes focused unsteadily. "Soon. Help...?"

Without thinking, Obi-Wan reached out to the Force; brought it flowing into him and through him into his master. Fear and fury tugged, trying to pull the flow of life away, distracting him, nagging him. He hated himself for feeling it, and it was that which finally ripped the Force out of his hands, leaving him bereft.

Qui-Gon straightened, squeezed his arm in thanks. It hurt a little - the man had a strong grip. "The moon, Dra'zim."

Obi-Wan wanted to scream. Surely Qui-Gon couldn't still be ignoring this? He _must_ give in now. Surely?

Nam Gillet had frozen in place, and Arawn had backed away, stood, hands over his mouth, shaking, as though he had shared in every serrated edge of pain. But really - Obi-Wan managed to achieve a tenuous dispassion - really nothing _had_ changed, and there still was the question of the shared moon: Not enough land for two, but no-one allowed to build underwater.

Qui-Gon's hand was so cold that even through two layers of fabric it felt chill. "Tell them about Nield."

Now Obi-Wan felt as stunned as the others. _Nield!_ What could Nield have to do with this? Nield's friendship had been the other reason - after Cerasi - that he had left the Order and thrown away everything he had so much dreamed of having. Was this some kind of strange rebuke? Would Qui-Gon really do that to him _now_?

"Think. The lake...."

And the solution came to him fully grown, with a kind of awe, and joy, because instead of a rebuke this could only be a gift.

"Nield is the Governor of a planet called Melida/Daan," he began, and felt the shocked gazes settle on him with relief. _How off balance they must all be, if they find being addressed by a 13 year old boy reassuring!_

"Melida/Daan has recently come out of a period of civil war. Their economy is ruined, but they maintain manufacture of Houses of Remembrance. Lately they ran out of land and began to build them on repulsor-lifts, over the lakes and seas..."

Nield's face, drawn and bitter as he showed Qui-Gon the lake where he had swam as a child - the only place untainted by war on his world - and the ugly black building that floated over it; full of angry ghosts.

Now even that violation would be turned to good. _Oh, Master, this is brilliant!_

"The manufacture of repulsorlifts is the only exportable industry they have left, and currently it's moribund, waiting for orders. Do you see? The Beta Systems could have the land, and the Nimgoni could build _over_ the water - without touching it."

It was so like Qui-Gon, to bring peace and new prosperity to over six devastated planets, and to do it by means of a personal friendship.

Obi-Wan's awe and pleasure faltered a little when he thought of it that way. But was it right? Was it moral that he as a Jedi should use his influence to acquire orders for his friend's industries? Nimgon could probably get those repulsor lifts elsewhere for less money.

Yes - made by a company like Offworld or the Trade Federation, whose workers were slaves, where the profits would go straight into the hands of the rich and corrupt. But if they bought from Melida/Daan the money would rebuild a war-torn world.

It felt fantastic to be doing something for Nield, but his mind was uneasy. He looked down at his Master - dismayed to see him openly shivering - "Is it right, Master?"

"Why not?"

"People will say..."

"Let them. Can't care what people say, or...never do anything."

That sounded like a personal creed. Not greatly reassured Obi-Wan turned back and found all the frightened, separated individuals in knots of discussion - heads down over datapads. He could sense it - an easing throughout the room; consensual relief, as if the decision had already been made.

Absurdly, Nam Gillet's colour had changed to pink and silver, like the Temple at sunset. _Humour?_

"What are they here for?" he said, pointing at Im and her children.

"Witnesses." Qui-Gon's voice rattled in his throat.

"To shame me?"

But he managed a crooked smile, "Or to inspire."

The shade deepened until Nam Gillet was like a massive rose with golden eyes. An unexpected resurgence of something worthwhile in him? Or a cynical adaptation to the changed circumstances? "Well, if I'm to start a career as a man of compassion we'll begin with you. Get yourself to the infirmary. I don't want you dying here on the only valuable carpet in the building."

Qui-Gon grinned - one of the rare broad smiles that didn't suit him - "Sign first."

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan stopped in front of the tank and pressed his hands on the glass. His breath misted the clear surface, and his hands left streaks of moisture and mud.

_Master Jinn?_

Qui-Gon floated in the bacta, long body mapped with old scars, expressive hands relaxed in unconsciousness, face hidden behind the mask and the billowing dark cloud of hair. Utterly remote, utterly untouchable.

_Master?_

Obi-Wan had duties to fulfil, and detailed instructions on how to go about them, but somehow he couldn't find the strength to start. He wanted to stay here - to break the glass and shake the man until he woke up. Nothing else in the universe was real.

A hand wrapped around his wrist - startlingly brown against his pallor - and he looked up into the umber eyes of a middle-aged nurse. "You're not doing any good here, you know; messing up my stuff." It was good that she wasn't kind - he didn't think he could have stayed together under the impact of kindness.

"We're going to take him out in three hours. We'll know then."

She twisted him by the shoulders, his head coming last as he strained not to turn away. "Go - get yourself clean. Eat something. Maybe get some rest?"

Im and her family were forlornly sprawled in the corridor; feeling placeless, like him. "Come on," he said dully, "You can have my room."

He led them there, palmed open the door and stood back as they surged in. Immediately the large space looked crowded.

"Wow!" Eryn jumped on the soft bed, scattering dirt on the sheets, "Wow it's like sitting on a cloud!"

 _It's like being smothered,_ Obi-Wan thought. An urge rose up in him to tell her he wasn't used to this luxury, that the pallets of the Temple were thin and hard, that he wasn't the spoiled little rich boy she thought. But today the urge was unimportant, and he let it fall away into darkness.

He watched them gawk at the cleanness and comfort with a sense that he should be receiving something from their pleasure. An empathic pleasure of his own, perhaps? Satisfaction? Master Jinn would feel it. Master Jinn would....

"I'm going to get clean." Obi-Wan grabbed fresh clothes and pushed through the adjoining door to his master's room, unable to face their curiosity and noise any more. It was quiet in here.

_What am I going to do?_

The shower stung in abrasions he had not noticed. Mud thinned around his feet, and he had to scrub his hair twice to get rid of the salt and sand. His scalp felt raw. New tunics pulled harshly over an angry sunset of purple bruises and grazes. He replaited his short braid in the mirror without looking into his own eyes.

_What am I going to do? Suppose he...._

He couldn't finish the thought - he recoiled from it, scared and a little surprised by the desolation which lay there, even in imagination.

_I'm going to do my job._

He sat at the comms terminal, twitched his white tunics straight, and put through a call to their liaison at the Temple. Wasted effort - the striped eyes that met his could not see his nervous neatness. "Tahl!"

But she could hear the tremble he was trying to suppress in his voice. "Obi-Wan? What is it?"

"I want to formally notify the Council that the treaty between Nimgon and the Beta Systems has been signed. I'm downloading a copy, and a request for Republic Aid..."

Tahl put her hand on the screen, as if to reach through and read his face. The scar danced across her eyes and forehead as she frowned. Obi-Wan didn't like looking at it, remembering that he had tried to maroon her on Melida/Daan when she was newly blinded. She was one of his Master's oldest friends, and that was one more thing Qui-Gon had to forgive him, if he lived.

"Obi-Wan, why isn't Qui-Gon telling me this?"

"He's," he bit the inside of his cheek again - it was getting very sore, "He's hurt, Tahl. There was something here we weren't expecting. Something evil and very powerful; we haven't had a chance to find out what, but it got him. They're going to tell me in a couple of hours whether he'll...be OK. Or not."

"I see." She sat up straighter, breathed twice, and presented to him the mask of Jedi calm he was sure he wore himself. "Are you in danger?"

"No." The Force, elusive as it was even at the best of times, was now the calmest thing in his soul. "I think Master Jinn drove it away. I don't know what happened. I wasn't...I wasn't there."

"Alright. Just hold the situation together and I'll send a new team out to you at once."

Failure. Anger rose out of the pit of his soul like a bright arrow. His master had _not_ failed. "No! Didn't you hear? The treaty's signed, there's nothing more to do!"

She dared laugh over his pain; but he felt he deserved it from her. "Obi-Wan they won't take your glory. They'll accompany the first shipment of aid, to see it's fairly distributed. They'll tidy up any loose ends, and you can bring him home to the healers.

"OK" he nodded, knowing she couldn't see, but unable to trust his voice. She waited through the silence, hearing maybe the ragged edges of his breathing, but thankfully not able to watch his face. "Tahl, can they come fast? He... He promised the aid would come tomorrow."

Her grin was half grimace; "Sounds like the Jinn I know. Always asking too much."

Obi-Wan thought of Gemmer's frail determination; Blue, silent and decent and desperate,

"Tahl that's not fair. People are dying here. You want more innocent lives to be lost just because 'these things take time'?!"

 

She chuckled, "Now you sound like him! I'll do what I can, Obi-Wan. And don't worry; the man's very difficult to kill."

He thought about food, and about rest, and they nauseated him. So he spent the next two and a half hours searching for Im's missing child. Going through the records relentless as a droid he could pretend that his stomach was clenched with hunger and it was only lack of sleep which made his eyes smart.

 

* * *

 

"He's still unconscious!" Obi-Wan's voice broke as he said it, but his spirit was under such tension that he didn't care, even though two doctors and the middle-aged nurse had all stopped to look at him.

"Here, child." She was a lot gentler now, as she pushed a chair to the bedside. He wondered if that meant something bad, and nerved himself up to ask. _I'm a Jedi. I can do this._

"It's still touch and go." She said gently, "He was hurt worse than we thought." Patting the seat she smiled at him, "Talk to him. Someone familiar...well. Maybe you can get him to wake up."

Obi-Wan sat down, and though the lights were bright and the room unbearably cluttered with people, he felt that the universe was emptying around him. He was going to be the only thing left in a white, meaningless void. "Master?"

The bruises had faded from Qui-Gon's face. He might have been sleeping, but for the breathing mask and the tubes in throat and wrist. Strands of his hair - the mingled browns of chestnut and chocolate - fell over the edge of the bed and brushed Obi-Wan's knee. A writing that he couldn't understand against the pale linen.

He checked, to make sure no-one was watching, and then he leaned forward and took the large hand into his own. "I've got everything sorted out. The Temple's taking care of the treaty, and I've written a search program to look for Tli, Im's daughter. There's no sign of..."

It was growing hard to talk. His body wanted to cry, but he wouldn't let it. He had so much to cry about. If he started he would not stop for days, and Qui-Gon needed him to be strong. A moment, closing his eyes, pushing all those griefs back down, and he went on. "No sign of that...nexus. I told Tahl you drove it away. Did you? I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you fight it alone... I'm sorry I..."

 _Blamed you. Thought you'd left me to die?_ Those things could not be said. A sob escaped - just one, and he bit it back quickly, burying his teeth in the trembling lip. He'd run out of things it was safe to say.

Bowing his head, he watched his hand where it lay, impossibly small against Qui-Gon's; small, pale, powerless. He couldn't make Qui-Gon wake. He couldn't make this man do anything he didn't want to do, not even live. "Oh Master, _please_."

Fingers flexed against his. He looked up, with tears fighting joy in his heart. "Master, please wake up."

Qui-Gon turned his head toward the sound of his Padawan's voice, smiling. He opened his eyes, looked at Obi-Wan. Surprise, confusion, and sorrow went through his unguarded face like a confession.

 _Force!_ Obi-Wan snatched his hand away, backing off, _He expected someone else. Like Xanatos! And he's *disappointed* that it's only me!_

"Obi-Wan?" A weak rasp of regret, concern.

"Oh, you remembered my name this time!" Vague impressions of the chair falling, its clamour shaking the ward, everyone looking. And then he was out of the door and running.

"Bastard! I _hate_ you!" He found himself at their ship, pacing through the empty cabins, shouting at the walls. "You don't want me, well fine! I can get a new master. I don't need this. I don't need you."

He bruised his hands against the walls, and when the pain bit slid to his knees and rested his forehead on the cool metal. "Right, Oafy. How glad are the Council going to be about this? First you leave the Order, come back; leave your master, come back, leave again. It looks great, admit it. If I was them, I'd want to get rid of me too."

He turned round, drew up his knees and beat his head softly, repetitively, against the wall. "I could tell them it was your fault, Qui-Gon. It was you I couldn't get along with. You who kept driving me away. I would do fine with a different master."

The words had a shape he couldn't quite comprehend. He said them again, "A different master."

Even supposing the Council took him back, even supposing another master would want him, just saying it was like death. Thinking it was like standing on the edge of a pit, willing himself to jump, knowing that if he did, the darkness would close over his head forever. It tasted of ashes and despair in his mouth.

He got onto his bunk, pulled the sheet over himself, switched off the lights and lay in the dark for hours.

"I hate you, Master."

_What am I going to do?_


	9. Chapter 9

_Flick, flick...flick...flick, flick._ Bars of light slid across Kirru's face. A brief blaze behind his eyelids - pink, crimson, pink, and gone. Nausea made their swelling and shrinking brightness unbearable. _Flick, flick...flick_ and he wanted to throw up. His skin crawled or the lights crawled on it - _flick, flick,_ \- gentle and vile as the feet of blowflies.

"Is he still under?" A young woman's voice spoke to his left - cultured, timid, gentle as the lights. He thought he heard sadness there and for a moment there rose up the fantasy of being rescued. When he opened his eyes he would see a med-bay, kindly healers who would tell him that the pirate ship had been intercepted, and he was going home.

Home. Where his mother's bones were even now being eaten by _sthredy_. In the long, drugged sleep he had seen her severed head settled deep in the permafrost, with the eyes frozen open. _Your fault, Kirru. They wouldn't have come except for you._

A hand picked up his wrist. Something alien was embedded there - a needle deep in his flesh. The hand squeezed it, and pain lanced up his veins. Before the tempering he had been given by Jack's crew, Kirru would have cried out. Now he only used the sensation. Like the shock of running out of the steam room and diving into ice-capped water, he let it make him more alive.

"Yeah, he's still out." The hand had been large and strong, though smooth as a girl's. The voice was deep and rumbled the air high above him. When he moved, he would have to roll to the left and take out the woman.

"Poor little thing," she said hesitantly, "He looks almost human, doesn't he?"

Something in him yearned towards her pity; like a leaf opening blindly to the sun. A rush of brilliance which could only be the Force curled through him, and he wanted to reach out with it, connect with her, be ...forgiven.

But he couldn't get it to work. _I don't know how!_

The male's hand came down on his head, where the bumps and hollows of his crown had begun to ache with the onset of puberty. Fingers pushed his skin against sharp bone, and the Force fled from his anger: _I will be a man soon. You will never be!_

"They're the worst kind, the 'almost humans'."

The sickening _tic_ of striplighting slowed. Footsteps which had been muffled rang out sharp on metal, raising dim echoes, swiftly dampened. He heard the presence of enclosing walls, the smallness of the room. _Not time yet._ But he must not wait too long, or they would sedate him again.

An airlock door thunked and hissed behind them. Unexpectedly, he had to fight to stop his lip from trembling. Where were they going now? Were they transferring to yet another ship? How would anyone ever find him again?

And then desolation ate what was left of his heart, leaving him hollow. Because, of course, no-one was coming for him. No-one was even looking.

Air surged in. Eddies and whirlpools of scented warmth brushed his wounds. The smell of every breath left him bereaved. Flowers, berry sweetness and a rich taste like cream at the back of his throat. _This is not how the world should smell. I want to go home._

"What does he need these children for anyway?" The woman's voice held awe and sorrow, but no disapproval. She was a willing tool, like Warra, Kirru thanked his ancestors that he had not reached out to her, betrayed himself. Then the words struck home, _'These children'? There's more of us?_

The man laughed with casual cruelty, "Guess!"

They were busy manoeuvring Kirru's anti-grav pallet down a narrow gangplank. The sun made a brilliant spot on the edge of Kirru's right eye, blue-white and tingling hot. The air was too moist and thick to breathe.

"For the Altar?" She had a sweet voice, young and innocent, which trembled with horror and reluctant admiration. "To be sacrificed?"

Kirru excused himself from any mercy towards her, just before she added shakily, "But they're so young."

"Young vermin are still vermin," said the man, "They grow up."

And he would get what he deserved.

His captors had shifted position as they spoke, going to either end of the pallet. The slap of their shoes was tinny, rattling, as if they edged across metal mesh. A whisper of moving air sighed up, pushing at Kirru's back. Heavy breezes plucked damply at the rags of his embroidered shirt.

Sound fell away into vast distances. Something shrieked beneath the woman's feet and he felt her flinch. Cautiously he opened one eye just enough to see a line of vision darkened by the comb's teeth of his lashes.

"But why spend all this money when we've got aliens here? Aren't the Rens good enough any more?" Sight confirmed that she was small and young. Against a drape of white robes her skin was the yellow-tan of a baked Harvest biscuit, and her dark eyes were intriguingly upswept in a delicate face. Pretty. Except for the colour she might have been one of The People. The smooth, flawless skin of her skull glistened as the blue sun touched it.

Behind her he saw only a lilac sky, a fume of opal mist and the wheeling forms of tiny trilling things, iridescent with light. There was no ground - the walkway swayed straight among the clouds.

"Who knows? You going to ask the Prophet about it?" He could see little of the man except long white sleeves, and hands almost the same colour, with dirty, bitten nails.

"No!" Biscuit's fear was a current of cool in the landscape of Kirru's mind. Not a hard thing, but yielding, clinging. She surrendered under it and it closed about her - too fine and delicate for her to know she was trapped. It made what had happened to him seem crude.

An answering dread seeped from Bitten-nails, making a net in which his two captors were caught. Dismaying to know that they were afraid too. Was there no-where in the Universe safe from it?

A faint sensation of rising, and a shadow fell over him. At the same time the pace altered; the woman's feet fell on stone and there was a jerk and shift as the pallet bumped off the metal bridge onto solid ground once more. Kirru readied his spirit for action, even while he lay limp.

_Not yet. Not at the lip of the canyon._

Walls of white stone, smooth and polished, eerie as standing ice in the heat. Then a door, big enough for a trading caravan...

**There must be a road along the side of the cliff. You don't need a door that size for single-file traffic across the bridge.**

The voice of his training-tapes was speaking again, almost like a separate personality in his head. One which felt no despair, which felt good - cold, numb, not caring about anything but this move, this moment, this victory.

A splash of water underfoot and drizzle of rain against his cheek as the moist atmosphere outside met temperature control. Suddenly the air was blessedly cool, and the stench of flowers was cleaned away.

 _Now!_ He rolled off the platform, twisting in mid air so he could come down on his feet. Pushed off - oh his legs trembled - and was running. The tube flapped from the needle in his wrist. A smart jerk and it came free. Blood oozed out and pattered on the pristine white floor, and Biscuit recoiled from it, even as she stepped forward to give chase.

 _I'm that unclean to her?_ He noticed, catalogued the thought - it might serve as a weapon later - without acknowledging the spike of hurt.

"Get him!" 'Nails shouted, lunging slow and stupid for the space where he had been seconds ago. With his eyes open he could see he had chosen to make a break for freedom in the middle of a great reception hall, full of people.

 _Useless idiot!_ Kirru angled toward the door, bare feet gripping sure on the treacherous marble, and saw for the first time the guards, the glimmer of a control panel, even as a white-robed monk reached up lazily, slapped the button, and blast doors came down in a blink of durasteel, sealing him inside.

_No!_

**You don't have time to regret. Regroup.**

He turned, and as if his desperation loosed some new power in him he saw for a moment the whole hall, paused; a rapid-feed of information which frightened the boy, Kirru, but delighted the tape-trained killer who rode in his mind.

Opposite the door, where sunlight should have struck it and made it blaze, a man-sized eye of crystal hovered among purple drapes. Floating, gold-rimmed pupil dilating, the sketched platinum lids narrowing, it swivelled to stare at him. It was the only thing which still moved in the frozen instant of revelation.

Two humans stood on either side of it, the sweep of their chiffon-light robes drawn out of a manuscript, their carefully matched faces keen, alert and handsome, their hands resting on eye-tipped staffs which crawled with azure fire.

 **Stun-poles,** Tapes noticed, **One right handed, one left - for symmetry.**

The sub-personality was beginning to develop his own brand of harsh humour. _It's only me._ Kirru whimpered in the dark, _He's me. I don't have to be scared of him. He's me..._

Where the purple carpet gave way to stone a circle of white monks knelt, meditating, hands on thighs, feet folded neatly together. A display of piety which also kept the pilgrims from getting too close to the Eye.

And the rest of the pale hall was filled with ordinary people. Kirru had almost tumbled into a family. Father and mother nude except for loin-cloths, their hair dressed with quills. A girl about his own age, wearing a feather cloak and sandals, had a baby on her hip. The infant's puppy fat hand waved a rattle of small bones, but the girl's gaze was caught in the instant of lighting on Kirru. It showed surprise, curiosity, the beginning of a smile.

 **Edge of an open door behind the curtains, and a path to it *there*** The part of his mind which noticed these things slid back into place behind his eyes, saw what he had been looking at. **A baby? Potential hostage?**

_No!_

As his mind fought itself the world shuddered, speeded, and he knew the instant of awareness had been another gift of the Force, offered and then snatched away. Both of him united in anger and grief.

She really was smiling at him!

**Run to the door and get through!**

Kirru ignored the inner voice, stumbled toward the welcoming girl, holding out his slashed and bloody hands. If only one person in the Universe would feel compassion for him, then he knew he could stay sane. He could rein in the other half of him, could keep himself together. He wouldn't have to go mad.

"Please...Please help me."

One act of mercy was all he asked for; one glance, even the merest brush of her fingertips across his. To be touched and not hurt... _You hold my soul in your hands. Please help me!_

"Aah!" She recoiled into her mother's arms, both of them craning away, startled and afraid.

"Don't touch her, you filth!" The father started forward, fear and - worse - disgust flinching across his good-humoured face. A nice-looking man, with friendly, candid eyes, nerving himself up to strike at the abomination who threatened his child. Again the world stopped for Kirru, as if even time couldn't bear his presence, as if the fabric of reality abhorred him, and he wanted to fall to his knees right there and cry until the world ended.

 **Idiot!** Tapes stepped into his body, took it over, and he had downed the man with a one-knuckle strike to the solar-plexus and run for the curtained door even before the girl had started screaming.

Chaos. Like a thief chasing through a market day crowd he dove through grasping arms. A hand caught him and he bit it hard, tasting blood, crunching finger bones like boiled sweets in his mouth. He lurched back and up, smacked the bowed face with the top of his head, breaking a nose, and was free again.

More screaming. Someone sobbing. He leapt over the kneeling monks - they had not stirred once, too pious for this unholy hunting scene - and there was instant silence.

**We're...I'm defiling their sacred space.**

_Let's trash it!_

Tapes' lack of emotion was not enough for Kirru now. The Universe had rejected him, and he wanted to hurt something, just to prove that he still existed. The delicate, articulated crystal of the Eye looked very breakable. He could get back at every single person in this room if he smashed it....

But the Eye was watching him. Reflected on its surface his own face looked out; so much harder than it had seemed when he saw it in the mirror at home. He was the very centre of its attention. **I've...we've made their god bow to us.**

But that wasn't it, Kirru thought, with a flicker of the same *rightness* he had felt when he saw the monk's ship for the first time. No, that wasn't it at all.

Biscuit threw herself down into an obeisance outside the sacred circle - purifying herself, making ready to give chase. A quick glance and spike of pleasure as he saw it was Nails' fingers he had crushed. And then the *rightness* drew him through the curtained doorway into a hewed stone passage lit with crystal lamps.

There were no guards here, no sense of air movement, and the uproar in the hall was muted by the thick drape of purple velvet behind him. Logic told him he should run. There couldn't be much time before Biscuit, or someone more dangerous, came after him. But something overrode logic.

He walked a little, feet dragging, the sense of _something_ nagging like a blister with every step. _If the Jedi had taken me, if I'd been trained, I would know what to do...What is this?_

At last the corridor opened out into a cloister. Indigo sky was lapped by snowy walls and reflected in the quicksilver surface of a still pond. He flattened himself against the wall just outside the archway he had come through and braced himself to take down the pursuers when they came. Then he closed his eyes and tried to listen for the Force, opening himself to receive whatever message it was trying to give him.

Like a silk thread, sliding across bare skin - subtle, cool, heavy, the impulse turned him to the left, not questioning why. _This must be what Jedi feel._ It was soothing to put down the burden of choice and just follow.

Cool, black silk, smooth in his tired mind, reminding him of...of.... He stopped, amazed. This was fear. This quietness, this dreamy cold surrender was the fear he had sensed in the minds of his captors. The web that bound Biscuit and held her gently - overawed and sad; it was fear. And now he was following it to its centre.

 **It'll be the Prophet.** The tape-persona was still reasoning, preparing to act, but Kirru sank under black silk, walking on autopilot through gardens and intersections as if he knew them. Meeting no-one and hearing no pursuit.

**Too easy. He's arranged this. It's a trap.**

Kirru heard himself think, and believed he should care, but couldn't. Golden doors opened at his thrust, swinging back on a room the size of a Starliner. Another Eye glittered, floating above a monolithic Altar shaggy with beards of rust-coloured moss.

**Kirru! It's a trap. Wake up!**

The mossy stone drew him and repelled him at the same time. Faintly carved, with gutters curved around its sides leading down to the hollow beneath it, it lay in a black stain. **This is not going to help you. Get away, now!**.

_So strong!_

When he drew closer the mosses stirred, as if they sensed him, as if they craned towards him, eager to eat. His own fear woke - a hot thing, a white presence, twining with the black strands of his guide. He reached out, touched the Altar.

Pain, pain and bloodlust and horror. Hatred like a raw scream. They arced through his body, filling him, filling the void of despair. Oh yes! And he was back in the moment where he made Micar's swoop explode, back feeling fierce and proud and hot. _Oh, yes!_ But with this power he could burn planets. He could find Warra and her crew anywhere, he could still make them pay. _Yes!_

**No!**

His hands snapped back, he reeled away, gasping, collapsing in the dirt of old blood. He felt fevered, nauseous, his limbs shook and - Ancestors! - he wanted more.

**Remember who your enemy is!**

It was strange for his combat-training to turn him away from power. Strange enough for him to peel himself off the floor, struggle to his knees and try to think. Warra, Jack and the pirates were tools, as the monks were tools. Surely his enemy was the one who sent them?

The Prophet had sent pirates out to kidnap innocent children, to kill their families. The Prophet was the leader of a cult that made a nice man recoil from an injured boy as if he was dirt. The Prophet was the spider at the centre of this web of fear. _**The Prophet is my enemy.**_

On his knees he could see puncture wounds in the moss at the very base of the Altar, where the clotted gore was thickest. A pallid glimmer, like exposed bone, showed delicate filaments spun out of the rock, plunging into the paving. Kirru could feel the power travel along them through the floor. Someone had harnessed this pit of energy, and that someone must be sitting - spiderlike - at the end of these threads.

**I...we felt that power. I can't win against it. Survival demands retreat.**

He tried to stand, and his legs gave way beneath him. How long had he lain drugged in the white ship? It seemed clear now that they had not fed him in that time. Adrenaline, receding, made him shudder, and he felt soiled and used by the blast of fury from the Altar. **Retreat, regroup.**

But he couldn't. Struggling against the web would only wind it tighter around him. And he was so _tired_! Why fight the pull of darkness when it was taking him to his enemy? He would save his strength for one final blaze of defiance. He would die, ridding the universe of a monster. He would atone for touching that power and end the desire for it at one stroke.

**You're behaving like a child.**

_I *am* a child._

**At least find a weapon.**

That he could do. On a plinth to the left of the Altar lay a knife. Its blade was a half moon of sharpness, its handle ivory, short, configured for a punch-grip or for rocking back and forth in a slow saw down into bone. No point for stabbing with, but it could slice...

As he had done with the second swoop rider at home, he would pretend to be a helpless victim. He would allow the Prophet to draw him close, and then he would pull the honed sharpness across the man's neck and be cleaned by sacrificial blood.

Slight tackiness reminded his fingers that this blade was more than used to gore. It radiated the memory of terror along his arm, setting up a harmony with the psychic wail of the altar. Between them he was a struck tuning fork of horror, resonances shrill at the base of his skull. He shook his head in sudden determination. _I'm going to put an end to his evil._

Briefly, even sickened, trembling, with the twin presences of knife and stone pouring guilt into his pounding head, he felt like a warrior of light. His imaginary master would be proud of him, and the Jedi - if ever they found out - would honour him for this, as if he was one of their own.

He cradled the weapon against his chest, hiding it in the stained rags of his shirt. Then he bent down and swept his palm across the floor, following the wires from the Altar, feeling their charge of raw emotion through the tiles like a heat.

A curtained alcove. Drapes of white and gold, and a door standing open onto shadow. **It's a trap!**

Fur carpeted the floor, soft and welcoming under his abused hands, grey in darkness. He could see no one, but he could feel it here; the place where all the tendrils of fear met up. He could hear it breathing, like a man.

To his right, a crystal globe - an Eye peeled of its lids - rested on the brushed steel of a cuboid table. An image moved in its depths. Kirru made out ribbons and cables of darkness like the tracks in a cloud-chamber. Beneath them, untouched by their corruption, a swathed figure pushed forward through a _snowstorm?_.

**Unimportant.**

The itch of the wires led away into unlit recesses. He could just make out the edge of a chair like a hollow egg, enclosing a clot of darkness. Filaments from the altar rose from the floor like strands of wet cobweb and twisted into that shadow, but he could not see what they connected with. Behind him the door closed by itself. Of course.

Accepting his death had given him peace, a freedom that was almost relief. Strength too; enough to pull himself to his feet, lock his knees and stand. He began to walk forward, unhurriedly. Soon everything would be over, and it wouldn't hurt any more.

"Kirru," said a voice from the shadows - a pleasant, soothing voice, very like the one which spoke in his dreams. "Don't you want to watch the Jedi die first?"

"What?!" Effortlessly it knocked his perilous serenity away, striking at the only thing he still held sacred. Effortlessly it unmanned him, and yet he knew, *knew* it gave him only the tiniest corner of its awareness, focused as it was on something more worthy of attention.

A white hand, disembodied against the darkness, slid out of black robes and rested on the Eye. It was suddenly obvious that all the lines of nightmare in the picture issued from this one palm. "Your faith in the Jedi is misplaced. Watch while I destroy this one, and then tell me where you will be safe - with them or with me."

 _Safe? He's offering me safety?_ Everything in Kirru at that instant yearned, cried out, to be safe again, and he knew there was no refuge against strength, except greater strength.

**The Prophet is your enemy.**

_I want to be safe._

The cloaked figure of the Jedi had knelt, quiet in the centre of the whirlwind. _Not a snowstorm. A storm of small rocks._ He had, even in miniature, a relaxed air, as though the unnatural fury around him was an inconvenience he waited through with good humour, pleasant as a spring shower. Very slowly, one by one, the lines of dark influence closest to him thinned and snapped.

"You're not even bothering him." Some part of Kirru felt a passionate loyalty toward the unknown Jedi - if only because he seemed so *sure*. Because he stood for the hope Kirru had nurtured all his life. He stood for Kirru's dreams.

The boy took a step forward, making out the curve of a knee clad in ebony, the fall of an empty hood. He would never have a better chance than this; to strike while his enemy was distracted by the Jedi. _But the Prophet said he would shelter me..._

"I've stopped him. And now I will kill him." A smooth hand gestured easily, and out of the storm came a gravestone almost as large as the Altar, taking the kneeling man in the chest, sending him flying.

"No!" A familiar pain by now, this clutch at the throat as Kirru watched everything he believed in being smashed.

"If you put your faith in weakness you will always be betrayed," said the kind voice of the Prophet. Kirru could hear pleasure in the honeyed gravel of its tones. Rage surged through him, warmed the hilt of his knife and made it sing in his head. He readied the anger and the weapon together, building the emotion as he'd learned on the Lucre, and edged forward again in time to see the blanched edge of a smile widen under the hood.

In the Eye, the stricken Jedi sat up again. The Prophet's smile flinched.

Kirru wanted to taunt. Wanted to shout 'You're not so strong!' but did not, because the concealed head had bent forward, and the brush of its awareness had gone from him. It had turned its full attention on the wounded man, and not for the wealth of Kessel would he remind it that he was there. His moment was coming.

 **Let me take it.** Combat training poured into his small form, and he eased himself forward, imperceptibly, shortening the distance. His right arm felt heavy with stored power, waiting to slash out and sever that smug head from its body.

All the vapour-trails of evil had cleared from the Eye, revealing the Jedi in sharp detail. Still kneeling, the fall had torn his hood away. Kirru could see his face, the long hair that whipped across his closed eyes, trickle of blood from his mouth, the expression of perfect content.

Screaming through the air around him, rocks, boulders, the girders of houses and torn keystones of tombs came hurtling down on him. _Fight, Jedi. I need to believe in you._ And the maelstrom of death recoiled from him.

_Yes!_

But the Prophet was chuckling. A sound of gloating enjoyment that reminded Kirru of his cousins, when they had pulled the wings off the bird they found in the outhouse. "Fight all you like, Master Jedi, but you'll die just the same."

Hatred surged, feeding back from the knife in his hand, building into a power that tried to claw its way out of his skin, a power he was too frail for. **Strike now!** But he couldn't wrench his attention from the strange battle. It had become a war for his soul. Because, surely, if the Jedi was a victim too, then the Prophet spoke the truth. The only safety _was_ with him.

It happened instantly.

In the early spring Kirru would always seek out the Dawnburst flowers. They thrived on the edge of glaciers, turning icicles into their greenhouses. When the weary sun had warmed the earth enough, the seeds would shatter into sudden growth. There would be a fire-rocket of green, an explosion of ragged topaz blooms so bright they made his eyes ache, and the ice would be covered with flowers.

It was the only thing Kirru could think of when the pillar of light left the Jedi's hands to break on the surface of the eye - a green and gold organic power like the Dawnburst. Hissing, the Prophet snatched his hand away.

 **Now!** And Kirru launched himself, ferocious with triumph, scything the blade through the dark hood, driving it at the throat.

 


	10. Chapter 10

> > Drowsily, Qui-Gon shifted on the narrow pallet, trying to find some position to lie in which would not make his whole body ache. _Why is it,_ he wondered, as the engine's tremble throbbed through his stiff chest, _That living hurts so much more than dying?_ He'd had enough near misses in his time to judge the difference.
>> 
>> The engine whined and the slow judder of re-entry pulsed through the floor, through the pitifully thin mattress, and shook the cage of his ribs like an imprisoned rancor. He sighed, muffling the desire to cough, and abandoned rest for yet another night.
>> 
>> In the opposite bunk Obi-Wan slept on, face to the wall, mouth and hands hard despite slumber, and a line etched deep between his brows. Miserable, even in sleep.
>> 
>> It had become rare for Qui-Gon to see his apprentice. At first, in pain, alone in the hospital, he had told himself that Obi-Wan had things to do, and that, perhaps, he might be one of those people who could not bear infirmaries. He had told himself the boy was so intense, so demanding, it was more peaceful without him. But still he had not been able to help himself feeling a little abandoned, a little betrayed.
>> 
>> He sat up and considered the boy's face in the twilight dimness of the cabin. So closed. Unreachable. Guilt twisted him, and an old fear. _What have I done now? What can I do to make it right?_
>> 
>> He edged forward, stretching out a hand, yearning to touch and give comfort. More immediate, more meaningful than words, a kind gesture had always meant the world to him. But Obi-Wan's character was very different from his. A thirteen year old boy could easily interpret a caress as an invasion, or worse, a threat.
>> 
>> Hesitating, he drew back to the edge of his bed, the gesture aborted. But that felt as if he had been gagged. _So many wrong paths, and any one of them could lead to ...what happened to Xan._
>> 
>> The ship yawed, flying now on atmospherics. There couldn't be much time before they landed at the refugee compound, and then the time for speech would have passed. Cabin lights began a slow climb from night to a yellow dawn, and Obi-Wan murmured something broken into his pillow.
>> 
>> Making a familiar decision, which got no easier with time, Qui-Gon decided to take the risk of being himself. _I want him to show me who he really is. Perhaps I should ask him to accept me the same way._
>> 
>> Laying a hand on Obi-Wan's head, he stroked the spiky hair, "Padawan?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan stirred, opened puzzled grey eyes that widened as he registered his master's presence crouched beside him, the touch. His look of shock was an accusation. _And now I've frightened him_ Qui-Gon thought regretfully, but he didn't move away - he couldn't, not while the boy looked so confused, so lost.
>> 
>> "M-master?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan's voice and force presence were filigreed with emotions, but Qui-Gon was pleased to find hope among them. Smiling, he patted the boy's head once more before drawing his hand back, splaying it on the bed to help him balance. "You looked so miserable, Padawan. I think you should tell me what I've done."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan scrambled into a sitting position, wedging his back into the angle of the walls and pulling his knees in tight. _Like Ibhis,_ Qui-Gon thought, with a catch of sorrow in his throat, _But Obi-Wan's nightmares over the past months have been real._
>> 
>> "I..." Obi-Wan pulled at his sheet, watching the change in texture as he tightened and released it, "I'm not sure I know what you mean, Master."
>> 
>> "I've barely seen you since I came out of the Bacta. You've been avoiding me, haven't you?"
>> 
>> Still Obi-Wan's downcast eyes studied the linen, head bent as if in shame. "I was very busy - helping with the food distributions, arranging this trip to find your lost girl. I...haven't had time."
>> 
>> Sometimes Qui-Gon wondered why he bothered. Some times it was clear to him that Obi-Wan had no desire to come to know him at all. "Don't lie to me, Padawan," he said, irritated.
>> 
>> Shields came down swift as blast-doors around the boy's feelings. He pushed himself further into the corner, huddling like a victim of abuse. A muscle at his jaw ticked as he bit down hard, and fear knocked Qui-Gon back against the wall - cold against his bare shoulder. "Obi-Wan? Did something happen to you while I was in the hospital?"
>> 
>> Silence. The hard line of Obi-Wan's mouth thinned, trembling as he stared at the sheet.
>> 
>> _There is no passion, there is serenity._ Qui-Gon breathed out anxiety and anger, centred himself, made a conscious effort to be confident. _The Force is my ally. I can deal with this._ "Padawan?"
>> 
>> "Don't call me that!" Like a new star the boy had compressed his feelings to the point where they exploded. Qui-Gon found himself burnt in the radiation of anger. "It's obvious you hate me. You want rid of me, well that's OK, I can cope fine without you."
>> 
>> Somehow, unaware, he had inflicted this doubt and damage on the boy. A small part of him felt vindicated _See. You really aren't fit to be a Master._ But he ignored it, focusing on the present need. "Obi-Wan, what makes you think I hate you?"
>> 
>> Surprised, the boy looked up - a quick stab of accusation from eyes like pitted steel. "Do you know you called me Xan? And when I..." his voice shook, he looked away quickly, scowling, "When I thought you were dying, you expected to see him. You _wished_ I was him. You were disappointed it was me." A long hiss of intaken breath. Qui-Gon waited, because he knew there was more.
>> 
>> "And you _killed_ him! If he was your enemy, what does that make me?"
>> 
>> Qui-Gon found himself rubbing the flattened bridge of his nose - a gesture he thought he'd long grown out of. He swallowed, _Xanatos._ and the grief stopped his mouth for a moment - a great weight he had to lift before he could speak.
>> 
>> "Obi... Xan was my Padawan for ten years. _How do you sum that up in words?_ "If I was wounded he comforted me. If I was unconscious it was his hand that drew me out of the dark. It was his worried face I saw when I woke..."
>> 
>> Fingers tangled in the unbound mass of his hair. He found himself pulling it hard, and stopped only with an effort. "It takes a great deal more than betrayal and a few moments of enmity to wipe out memories like those."
>> 
>> He nerved himself to look up. When had _he_ broken the gaze and retreated? No matter....
>> 
>> Cupping Obi-Wan's chin he lifted the boy's face. Some of the taut anger had left Obi-Wan's frame, and his eyes were fluid with thought - changeable as water.
>> 
>> Dena's advice came back to the Master in her clipped tones; "The kid doesn't do subtle." It might well prove the most useful thing anyone had ever told him about his new apprentice. He steeled himself to follow it - to say in plain language what Pepi would have understood just from a smile.
>> 
>> "Obi-Wan, you reminded me of Xan only because he once cared for me. I was grateful for your presence and your strength."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan gaped, speechless, but his shielding thinned, wavering like a curtain in the breeze. He accepted the reassuring squeeze of his shoulder with a bitter blend of hope and shame.
>> 
>> _Shame? I praise him and he feels ashamed?_ Qui-Gon tried again; "It was a great help to be able to leave things in your hands while I was recovering. I've been alone too long."
>> 
>> "But," Obi-Wan edged out of his hunched position, dangled his legs off the bed. Watching it, Qui-Gon blinked once, resting his head on the wall in relief _Finally._
>> 
>> "But you were _disappointed_ it wasn't Xanatos. You were sad because it was only me."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon felt suddenly old, ill-equipped to deal with another teenager. "No, Padawan. I was not sad to see you. It was just that I remembered..." He unfocused as the full rush of morning grief broke over him. Not fighting it, he waited in patience until he could speak again. "I remembered that he was dead."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan was looking at him like a droid confronted with a logic puzzle - as if what he had said couldn't possibly make sense. "But you..."
>> 
>> The door slid open. Dek surged across the threshold and balked. The orange of his pleased excitement flashed into an eye-hurting pattern of v's that spelled disapproval. "You're not even dressed yet!"
>> 
>> Qui-Gon smiled, stood up, and embraced the new moment. Some progress had been made with Obi-Wan. There was more work to do there, but now was obviously not the time. No point in being annoyed with Dek. The whole Nimgoni family must be at breaking point with emotion this morning.
>> 
>> He found his comb and began to tug some order into his hair, back aching as he raised his arms. "Are you waiting in the airlock? We'll meet you there as soon as the ship touches down."
>> 
>> Dek's lilac and tangerine combination was bizarre and somewhat humorous against the sterile corridors of the ship. Looking at him, Qui-Gon felt a surge of protectiveness. _Life tries so hard, and is so much greater than we think. Is it really wrong to give it a little help now and then?_
>> 
>> "You promise?"
>> 
>> "We'll be there."
>> 
>> As Dek slithered away, Obi-Wan grabbed an armful of clothes, pausing by the fresher door to say, "Master, isn't this a bit of a waste of time?"
>> 
>> Cold, again. _Yes we have a long way to go before we understand each other._ "In what way, Padawan, would you define reuniting a war torn family as 'a waste of time'?"
>> 
>> "I thought we'd be going after the Nexus by now. That's the big thing here, isn't it? I mean - alright - we _found_ the girl for them because that was the price of borrowing their speeder. But why are we using Jedi resources to fly the whole family over there? Temple pilot, Jedi time, Temple fuel. The Council's not going to be happy."
>> 
>> "They gave me a ship. I shall use it as I see fit." As he lifted both hands above his head to tie his hair back his left arm shuddered and the abused muscles of his chest cramped painfully. Almost as painful as hearing the Council's wisdom from the mouth of a child.
>> 
>> "But..."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon brought the disappointment under control. His Padawan was barely out of the Temple. He had not had time to grow used to the famous Jinn heresies. _I should be pleased he feels confident enough to question me._
>> 
>> However admirable the boy's persistence, half way to the fresher was not the time for it. He interrupted the objection. "Obi-Wan, we'll talk about this later. Get dressed, we have an appointment to keep."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> "Yes, Master Jinn," The aid worker smiled at him wearily, "It's all been arranged. I've sent someone to fetch the little girl. She'll be here any moment." He was a Mon Calamari and his huge eyes were misty with wistful happiness. "It's a good thing you've done. I just wish..."
>> 
>> "That I could do the same for them all?"
>> 
>> "Yes."
>> 
>> "So do I."
>> 
>> That was a regret he'd had to learn to live with. He stepped back, letting Im and her family press closer to the wire fence of the refugee enclosure. The ships ramp made a convenient place to perch, waiting.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan was already there, polishing a landing strut - managing to look busy, but in reality registering a silent protest at the need to be here at all.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon stretched out his legs, relaxed, and watched the boy's scowling industry with curiosity. "This doesn't help you? We've both seen so much death recently. Doesn't the prospect of restoring a life make it seem worthwhile?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan bit his lip, and his master could almost see him weighing that idea up, finding something in it, but not enough to overpower his objections.
>> 
>> "The point is that you're a Jedi Master." Obi-Wan began, his mouth relaxing as he was allowed to talk, "In the time it's taken you to rescue one unimportant little girl, you could have been ending a war and saving the lives of millions. Doesn't that make it selfish of you, choosing to save her, just because it made you feel better?"
>> 
>> _Yoda, you'd be proud. He's more your Padawan than I ever was._ "Obi-Wan, what is the purpose of strength?"
>> 
>> "To protect the weak."
>> 
>> "What is the duty of a Jedi?"
>> 
>> "To serve the people of the Republic."
>> 
>> "As a Jedi Master I have both the power and the duty to serve Im's family. Why then should I say no when they ask me for help?"
>> 
>> "Because you could be serving better by using your strength to do something more important."
>> 
>> So after all, it wasn't a failure of compassion on the boy's part, but of world view. _He's a Unifying Force Jedi. He can't see anything smaller than a planet._ "So I guess what we're disagreeing about is the importance of an individual."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan seemed surprised that he was being listened to, and oddly elated, as if he felt a breakthrough of some sort had been made, though Qui-Gon couldn't imagine why. He was having deja vu from the conversation about Ibhis.
>> 
>> "It's simple maths, isn't it?" Obi-Wan asked eagerly, "You harbour your strength so you can save the largest number of lives. Sometimes that means turning away from people who need help, and if that's so then we have to do it. Anything else is self-indulgent."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon found himself smiling, wondering whether Obi-Wan had intended to insult him, or had just done it by accident. "Mathematics? So if you had the choice between saving three innocent bystanders, or the Supreme Chancellor, you'd let the Chancellor die?"
>> 
>> "Erm," Obi-Wan had been striding, sure of himself, now he went to his knees to think. "No. Because the Supreme Chancellor has power over thousands of star systems. His death would cause massive disruption."
>> 
>> "In this case the individual is more important than the many?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan had been to too many logic classes to miss the fact that he was being manoeuvred into a corner. "Um," he said, "I suppose to be sure you'd have to measure the repercussions caused by his death and see if they outweighed those caused by the deaths of the other people."
>> 
>> He didn't let go of his opinion easily. Qui-Gon was pleased by that. "I hope you're taking into account repercussions in the future, also."
>> 
>> "Sorry?"
>> 
>> "One of the 'nobodies' we're weighing in the scale here may have a child who grows up to..." he shrugged, enjoying the debate, "Discover the cure for the Deathseed plague. Or, thirty generations down the line, perhaps the Chancellor's descendants have plunged the whole Galaxy into never ending war? What then?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan looked at him - that lightsabre pure glance that said 'You are totally mad, Master'. It was nice to see the boy back on form. "How are we going to know that?
>> 
>> The gates of the compound had opened and now Tli came slithering out on the arm of the Mon Calamari. Instantly, his briefly fostered family became an amorphous blob of interlocked limbs, hugging for dear life. He looked away, not wanting to intrude. "That's my point, Obi-Wan."
>> 
>> "What?"
>> 
>> "To quote Master Yoda 'Always in motion the future is.' We can't tell the purposes the Force has in this or that individual. We can't tell what good or evil we are doing or averting in the future. We can only do the good we are given to do _now_."
>> 
>> He sighed, _Finish with the specific._ "In Im's case, I had the choice - at that moment - between doing good and doing nothing. What use would I be if I chose to do nothing?"
>> 
>> The Nimgoni family had broken apart and now approached. They were ultraviolet with happiness, and to his human eyes looked sombre in black. The child was holding Eryn's hand. For the first time since Qui-Gon had known her, Eryn no longer looked dangerous, even though she was crying.
>> 
>> "Thankyou." Im was close enough to touch. She lifted two tentacles and gently pressed the final sucker of one to his cheek and the other to the hand of his Padawan. To his credit, Obi-Wan produced a brilliant grin.
>> 
>> "There's no need to thank us. We helped each other, as all life does." Self indulgent it might be, but he allowed himself a moment of standing in the sunlight of their happiness, reminding himself just why exactly he endured this life. Then he sighed and smiled. "Do you need transport back to the Capital?"
>> 
>> "No," Im turned in a spiral of limbs, "Tli has made friends here, and we have nothing we can't leave behind."
>> 
>> "Like that awful 'speeder!" Obi-Wan interrupted. His vehemence brought a faint giggle from Eryn, and a simultaneous outbreak of rose pink on Dek and his mother.
>> 
>> "No more body snatching for us." For a moment Qui-Gon thought that Dek was going to come up too, and there would be more speeches and more thanks. But thankfully Im chose that moment to glide away and he saw a chance to leave cleanly, without fuss.
>> 
>> "Come then, Obi-Wan." Standing, he bowed deeply to his adopted family - now no longer his responsibility. "May the Force be with you."
>> 
>> "Goodbye!"
>> 
>> The sight of joyously waving tentacles was cut off as the ship's ramp raised behind them. A good memory to take home from the mission.
>> 
>> The switch from planetary atmospherics to cabin pressure shortened his breath and made him cough painfully. It was a three day journey back to Coruscant. If he spent most of that time in a healing trance he should be fully fit again by the time they landed.
>> 
>> "Master?" Obi-Wan looked relieved now they'd finally set off. There was a brightness about his presence that he had not had since... Since Telos, when Qui-Gon had accepted him back as Padawan.
>> 
>> "What is it, Obi-Wan?"
>> 
>> "Are we going after the Nexus now?"
>> 
>> The snort of laughter hurt him too. Oh to be that young and that zealous again! "No, we are not going after the Nexus."
>> 
>> His padawan's look of disappointment was eloquent, and strange from a boy so rule-bound. Qui-Gon propped an elbow against the wall and leaned comfortably. "Firstly because we have no idea where to look for it. It was operating _through_ hyperspace, so it may be physically located on any planet in the Galaxy. I was not able to narrow the search down."
>> 
>> More disappointment, intense enough to deserve a mild rebuke. "I was distracted at the time, trying not to die."
>> 
>> The flinch of shame was apology enough. The boy's voice was subdued as he asked "So what are we going to do?"
>> 
>> "For now? Go back to Coruscant, report on our mission, await further orders."
>> 
>> "And do _nothing_? Master, this is important. Really important."
>> 
>> When the Force told young Kenobi something he forgot his place, his probation, his shame, and followed it. That Qui-Gon admired, greatly. "I know. That's why the Council must be told about it at once. It may be that they are already acting against it."
>> 
>> _Small chance._
>> 
>> "It may be that they will send another team - we are not the only Jedi in the Galaxy. Or it may be that the Force is not telling me anything about the Nexus at the moment because the time to act has not yet arrived." He regarded the boy fondly, "Be assured I am alert to the Force's will in this. If a way is found, if the moment is presented to me, I will seize it. _We_ will act. But for now we must exercise patience, and wait."
>> 
>> "Oh." Obi-Wan's emotions drifted into complex anxiety, as if he was nerving himself up to risking something, to taking, or making some kind of test. "Then we have some free time?"
>> 
>> "Yes. Why don't you go up to the cockpit? I'm sure the pilot would be happy to let you work on your flying skills."
>> 
>> "Actually, I was hoping you'd teach me the meditation you promised."
>> 
>> He should have expected this and been ready. But why wouldn't the boy leave well alone? In a flash of savage intensity, the image from his dream recurred. The sensation of grabbing the boy's hair, the faint resistance of bone as he pulled the blade of his sabre through the body; he could _feel_ it. He could smell acid and despair. _No!_ He took a step backwards, animal panic tight in his throat, and saw the look of hurt. "I...can't."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan clenched his fists, walked forward, closing the distance, pressuring him. "Then teach me some lightsabre drills...Anything!"
>> 
>> _Look what happened to the last boy I taught!_ He retreated again, gripped by a terror he _knew_ he should fight, but didn't know how. If Xan's fate was his fault, how _could_ he teach another? _Don't turn me into your executioner too, Obi-Wan._
>> 
>> Now Obi-Wan was standing, looking betrayed, and he didn't know what to say. Proof, if proof was needed, of how _useless_ he was as a Master. "Obi-Wan, I..." let the boy hear both meanings if he could, because certainly Qui-Gon was in no fit state to explain. "I have a lot of healing to do."
>> 
>> He forestalled the protest with a raised hand, struggled to make his voice level and calm. "I want you to do some of the exercises the Council outlined for you. Leave me to heal. I need to begin _now_."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Qui-Gon stepped off the ship, onto the landing platform, and took a deep breath. Below him the towers of Coruscant rose like crystal giants, reflecting the dawn sky. Early sunshine flashed from the lines of hurrying aircars and, across a few miles of silver walkway, he could see the spires of the Jedi temple, reaching out for him.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan came up beside him, silent as he had been for days. The boy's restraint had been welcome, but now Qui-Gon felt it was time for it to end. He looked down at the clouded face and smiled. "You're not pleased to be home?"
>> 
>> They had achieved an uneasy peace over the voyage by not talking. Young Kenobi looked surprised that he would risk it now. "It wouldn't be so bad," he said grudgingly, "If we could come home in triumph, just once."
>> 
>> His probationary status was obviously on his mind. Not for the first time, Qui-Gon had to suppress annoyance at the Council's uncanny ability to make everything worse.
>> 
>> The Master turned his face into the breeze, let it push at him playfully - the only wild thing left on this planet. "Padawan, so far every mission we have undertaken has been a triumph."
>> 
>> He began walking, summoning a retractable bridge, trying to stay among the clouds, where the great din of Coruscant's Living Force was reduced to far-off thunder; bearable.
>> 
>> "Even Melida/Daan?" Obi-Wan asked quietly. When Qui-Gon glanced down he could only see the top of the bent head, sandy hair reddish in the dawn.
>> 
>> "Yes." Brave of the boy to venture that question. It showed that Obi-Wan also was coming to terms with his past. "Certainly our methods on that occasion were unorthodox. But we not only met the mission objective of rescuing Knight Tahl, but brought peace to the world also."
>> 
>> He paused. The meditations of the past three days had left him feeling light of heart and body. Not whole - not quite - but close. As if for the first time, he noticed the spill of gold across the sky, the thrum of wind and wild tang of sunlight. This was a good moment. "Perhaps you're right. I can see the Council disapproving of such conspicuous over achievement. It's so untidy."
>> 
>> He caught the small flash of a smile on Kenobi's face just before it was swallowed in gloom. "I guess I'm going to be in trouble anyway."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon stopped on the walkway, feeling it swing deliciously high among the reflective canyons. The air whispered to him that he could fly; if he would only step out over the gulf. _Liar!_ he thought, amused. But it was a fine feeling.
>> 
>> "You are not in trouble, Obi-Wan. _I_ am having problems. You are not. _I_ am going to come in for," he grimaced, "A great deal of useful advice. But you need not worry. You are doing well."
>> 
>> "Really?"
>> 
>> "Really." The art of being obvious seemed to bring results. He watched Obi-Wan's face change as the boy thought, and braced himself for the nagging which always came next.
>> 
>> Perhaps his Padawan had finally learned to be patient, however, because what he said was "Why are we walking? We could have landed in the hangar."
>> 
>> "I like to breathe some non-recycled air once in a while, Obi-Wan. And it's nice up here, don't you think?"
>> 
>> His thoughts were full of eagles and fire. The urge to fly had become insistent. He realised with sudden intensity that he should have been paying more attention.
>> 
>> "We're wasting Jedi time again?"
>> 
>> _Probably a joke,_ part of Qui-Gon noted, while the rest of him stilled, becoming passive, so the Force could tell him what it wanted him to know. _He's got that smug look._ "No. Hush a moment."
>> 
>> Thirty metres down two spires rose to rounded domes. Bridge controls were a fleck of blue light on the final story. He reached out _pushed_ them with the Force, and was jumping down to the cobweb thin strand before he remembered that Obi-Wan's fine control was not up to this.
>> 
>> _Damn, Jinn, you should have taught him when you had the chance._ But there was no time for regret or recrimination. He placed himself firmly on the narrow footbridge and gestured for Kenobi to follow. A flash of exhilaration through the bond, and the boy came plummeting. His foot hit the steel, he overbalanced, flailed above the mile-deep drop to Coruscant's eternal night, eyes and mouth round with shock. And Qui-Gon caught him by the belt, pulled him back.
>> 
>> They looked at each other wordlessly - Obi-Wan's face washed into utter blankness - and couldn't decide what the feeling was.
>> 
>> "I wouldn't have let you fall, Obi-Wan."
>> 
>> "That was _fun_!"
>> 
>> _Fun?!_
>> 
>> He made out the balcony of a sky hook, to the right, and below that - at this height still the size of a data chip, the ornamental garden of some princeling. "There, and there!"
>> 
>> "Why?"
>> 
>> "I don't know yet."
>> 
>> By the time they had reached a height equivalent to the Temple's ground level Qui-Gon had pinpointed where the Force wanted him to go; almost straight down, far in the Underworld, but in a district where the tips of the towers were favoured clubs of the Galaxy's elite.
>> 
>> At this elevation lifts would be choked with people, slowly crawling from floor to floor. Air traffic was heavy, and the gaps between buildings were thick with permanent bridges, making it hard to drop far. But urgency told him that falling through Coruscant was still the best way.
>> 
>> Buildings closed in as they fell through fog. Navigation became difficult between the washing lines, the traps set out for passing swoops and birds. Walls grew together as walkways became annexes. The sky shrank into a white cut-out far above as their world narrowed to a windowless hole walled with black mold.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon landed on a square of roof thick with refuse. The air was greasy around him as he stood knee deep in filthy plastic. _Further down._
>> 
>> This side of the planet was obviously new to Obi-Wan. He was looking round aghast, his fastidious white tunic turning brown in the acid smog. Qui-Gon followed his apprentice's gaze upwards - black steelcrete, bridges tangled so tightly even sunlight could not find a path through. _A well at the world's heart, and that heart is dark._
>> 
>> "Inside," he said, kicking away some of the trash so he could kneel, then digging in the slimy soil until he found what had once been a skylight. There was nothing living in the layer of ooze. _This is the truth of Coruscant,_ he thought, as he plunged his hands into the sterile soil, and as always it filled him with misery.
>> 
>> Inside were spaces far more ancient and forsaken than Nimgoni tombs. As he let the skylight fall into place behind them it was worse than being buried alive.
>> 
>> "Master?" Obi-Wan's voice was full of horrified awe, slightly choked in the stale air. "How long has it been like this?"
>> 
>> "Since before the Temple was built."
>> 
>> "And we haven't done _anything_?"
>> 
>> So there were after all some matters on which he and the boy thought alike. But now was not the time for a discussion of the Order's creative apathy. "Listen!"
>> 
>> Utter darkness, and the air was clotted, so that sounds fell strange on the ear, but that was the whine and ping of blaster fire.
>> 
>> The two sabres powered up at the same time, washing the shapeless spaces with water-coloured light. They followed the sounds down the rubble and echo of a ruined elevator shaft, into a huge chamber.
>> 
>> Movement - it seemed the wreckage moved, but no, it was people, cringing away from the light, scuttling away from the Jedi as humped and furtive as giant rats. A pile of rags became a young mother, collapsed in drug stupor. Her pallid infants watched Qui-Gon pass by with utter terror. He knew enough of their mythology to know he was a demon to them.
>> 
>> "Oh Force!" said Obi-Wan, behind him, pausing to look at the white, frightened faces, "There are _people_ here?"
>> 
>> He caught the boy's arm, pulled him away, wanting to protect him from the heartbreak of this.
>> 
>> "But," Obi-Wan looked as if his universe had come unglued, "Aren't you going to do something?"
>> 
>> Qui-Gon glanced at the young woman, fitting, murmuring in a pidgin Basic that sounded hardly sentient. Shook his head, hating what he was about to say, "They don't want our help, Obi. They want us to go away. So we're going to go away."
>> 
>> Beyond the cavern the blaster fire had intensified. Screams were echoing off the walls, dopplered into a constant high pitched wail. A gap in the wall showed a stairwell seared with violent light. Something was giggling in a hyena chuckle of bloodlust that turned his stomach, and was that...?
>> 
>> "I hear a lightsabre."
>> 
>> No wonder he had thought of fire.
>> 
>> They ran together to press themselves on either side of the doorway. Battle-meditation and hyperfocus came more easily than breathing to him now. He waited while Obi-Wan forced himself into the same state.
>> 
>> //You stay here. I'll get behind them and push them towards you.//
>> 
>> //The other Jedi?//
>> 
>> //She is a fine Knight. She will adapt.//
>> 
>> A thought occurred to him. Surely Obi-Wan would know this already, but it wouldn't hurt to remind him. //The screams you hear are echo-location. If you need to hide, remain still and pretend to be a rock.// He couldn't avoid adding humorously, //Remember that rocks don't breathe.//
>> 
>> Silently, he edged around the lip of the door, saw another chamber. The floor seethed with the almost canine shapes of corridor ghouls. In the green sabre light they were every nightmare of the living dead given flesh; their bare, pigmentless skin showing the flex of muscles, the pulse of blood underneath. Blind faces were muzzled, fanged, but obscenely humanoid. Though they went on all fours and their limbs were tipped with talons, still those were hands, capable of wielding a blaster.
>> 
>> _What madman gave them weapons?!_
>> 
>> Qui-Gon had never seen more than five ghouls in one place before - they had tendencies to cannibalism - but here they were thick as cockroaches, and armed.
>> 
>> Over their crouched backs he could see two other entrances to the chamber. At one the slender figure of a masked Jedi fought alone, deep indigo blade hardly seeming to move as she blocked fire in her elegant, spare style.
>> 
>> _Pepi._ The sight of her always made him smile. But she was barely holding her own. Even now he could see blood on her sleeve, the awkwardness of her right arm. Against this many ghouls she stood no chance at all. Drawn by the smell of gore, they were closing in on her. They would overwhelm her resistance by sheer mass, and then they would eat.
>> 
>> _I will not let that happen._ He gathered the Force, took two steps. The instant he moved screams shredded the room again; the ghouls had 'seen' him. Blaster fire salted the air around him as he leapt. A shot blackened the buckle of his belt as he blocked another to the head. _There are so **many** of them!_
>> 
>> Landing in a clutch of razor claws he came down just within the third doorway, blocking it. Sentiment told him to rush to Pepi's side, and he quashed it. These predators must not be allowed to run loose on Coruscant with guns. She understood that, so did he.
>> 
>> Hard to block every shot _and_ the pummel of bodies. The ringing yells pierced his head, and it took deep concentration to tune them out and hear only the peace of the Force. As he blocked a blaster bolt to the stomach a pallid arm, sinewed like steel, caught his cloak, pulled him backwards. Kicking out behind him his boot heel crunched in a face.
>> 
>> Too many of them! If he set himself against a wall he believed he might survive this. But Pepi, wounded, would not. And Obi-Wan? The child was already dangerously close to being overrun.
>> 
>> _Focus._ He sliced through three attackers, _pushed_ five, and saw as many more circling to get behind him. Fangs closed on his calf, and he hammer punched with his free fist, driving it through the base of a doglike skull.
>> 
>> Carnage. _I don't want to do this. I don't want to **be** this,_ as he drew the dripping hand back, picked up a blaster and fired into the crowd.
>> 
>> A useless thought. He let it go, spared a fraction of a second to glance at his apprentice. Just in time to see Obi-Wan lose his footing on the blood-slick floor and fall.
>> 
>> "No! Obi-Wan!"
>> 
>> The ghouls pounced.


	11. Chapter 11

> > An ugly surge went through the cavern as the ghouls registered Obi-Wan's fall. Qui-Gon and Pepi's opponents faltered, heads turning, as fanged muzzles sniffed out easy prey. The boy disappeared from view under a mound of snapping, fighting monsters.
>> 
>> "NO!" A useless spike of horror and denial tore through Qui-Gon at the sight. He let it all out in a shout which echoed off the ceiling. Broken joists and tumbled plascrete tossed the sound crazily. In the centred calm which followed his protest Qui-Gon saw the pause - ears flicking, bewildered - which went through the crowd of ghouls.
>> 
>> Beneath the pile of frenzied attackers Obi-Wan's sabre hissed into silence. Blank eyes lifted, and across the room, one after another, exploratory screams rang out.
>> 
>> _Of course!_ Qui-Gon risked a glance at Pepi, saw from the angle of her veiled head, the stillness of her posture, that she had just had the same idea, at the same time.
>> 
>> Wrenching the comlink out of his pouch he twisted dials calmly. Emotions could wait until it was safe. Feeling the deadly urgency of the task would only make him perform it poorly.
>> 
>> Moving at enhanced speed it took him only microseconds to set the programme. Still it seemed too long.
>> 
>> He hit the button. Instantly the com burst out with a wail louder than an exploding starship. Breathing carefully Qui-Gon focused a little thought into defending his eardrums from the blast of sound. Only a moment later Pepi's comlink bellowed out a second tone, the sounds melding, then coming apart in an hideous asynchronicity. The slight difference of pitch set up harmonics like high mad voices shrieking between the two. A piercing note sliced through his head less cleanly than a million needles.
>> 
>> With his human hearing Qui-Gon found the onslaught only just bearable. But the ghouls had ears sensitive enough to hear the echoes made by the cracks in a paved floor. Under the battery of noise they blundered against each other, snapping, clawing - maybe keening; it was not possible to hear. Soon they began to collapse, going down before the cutting edge of sound like corn before the sickle.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon turned to Pepi. //Take the blasters from them. I must see to the boy.//
>> 
>> Hyperfocus between them was one-sided due to the mask, but he didn't need her acknowledgement. She would do what was necessary. Leaving her to it he leaped over the twitching bodies, raced to Obi-Wan's side.
>> 
>> There was nothing to be seen of young Kenobi. But blood was seeping from beneath the mound of unconscious ghouls in a thick portentous flood. Someone had died.
>> 
>> _Oh, Obi-Wan._ A host of emotions clamoured to be recognised - fear, regret, guilt. He began lifting the creatures away. Each one of them was heavier than a human, limp and difficult to shift. His heart raced and he stilled it _I will fear nothing, regret nothing. I am a Jedi._
>> 
>> Many of the ghouls in the pile were corpses. Distracted by their desire to eat the boy they had fallen victim to the latecomers. Qui-Gon began to haul away bodies. Ripped throats glistened, and his hands grew slick with blood.
>> 
>> With a grunt of effort he lifted the final ghoul. This one was so mauled that when he moved it the severed neck parted and the head fell separate to the drenched floor. A feeding frenzy of ghouls was a fearsome thing indeed.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan looked very small in the centre of the ring of carnage. He had managed to curl himself into a ball. Lying on elbows and knees, hands clasped tight around the vulnerable nape of his neck he protected his face, throat and stomach, offering little but bone to the teeth.
>> 
>> _Good boy._ Qui-Gon thought, with a tremor of ridiculous tears. In the sabrelight there was no part of Obi-Wan which did not gleam crimson, and somehow it seemed unbearably poignant that he had reacted so well.
>> 
>> The Padawan's tunics were shredded, and when Qui-Gon touched the exposed shoulder his world stopped in a moment of sickening intensity. The flesh was cooling, corpse-like.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon rejected the flash of shock, pulled the boy up, easing the locked limbs apart. Obi-Wan's chest did not move under his master's exploring hands - no breath - and when Qui-Gon felt wrists and throat there was no pulse.
>> 
>> "No," his whispered denial was eaten by the monstrous noise around him, but he had not meant it to be heard. _No!_ This bright, annoying, promising, angry, beautiful child could not be dead, just when Qui-Gon was beginning to care about him - surely? Surely the universe could not be that cruel _again_?
>> 
>> Once more he turned away from his own emotions, forced himself to approach this with calm, like the Master he was. _I may be missing something._
>> 
>> No heartbeat, no respiration, the body going cool, the bond between their minds silent. But why? Obi-Wan's back was a webwork of claw marks and bites, which would have been agonising had he been conscious, but were hardly lifethreatening. There was no other wound on him.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon shut off the comlink - he couldn't think in its din. Pepi followed suit. In the ringing silence which followed he could just make out the shrill whine of power-packs overheating, then a series of small explosions, sounding dull and far away, unimportant.
>> 
>> Kneeling as if for meditation Qui-Gon emptied himself again, gathered the white-hot Force of Coruscant and focused it into a compulsion. _Wake up, Obi-Wan. The danger is passed. Wake._
>> 
>> All the shields were down, and the mind was blank. In its darkness Qui-Gon almost despaired, but he was nothing if not tenacious, he followed the boy's self down below thought, below sleep, below the unconscious, to the most primal level of existence. There, not even knowing what it was, the mind of his student stirred at his presence.
>> 
>> He fled instinctively back to himself, found his body had recoiled as though the relief and shock were electric. He heard himself cry out. An "Oh!" of averted heartbreak almost painful in its intensity.
>> 
>> "Is he dead, Master?" Pepi had come to stand beside him, keeping watch in case the ghouls revived.
>> 
>> "No." He successfully kept the tremble out of his voice, but suspected she heard it anyway. "No..." It took a little time to gather himself, scattered as he was from the contact with an alien soul. "No he's not dead. I told him to hide from the ghouls by pretending he was a rock. He's put himself into suspended animation."
>> 
>> "Clever." Pepi tugged the white silk veil off, revealing her head and neck. She tucked it into her tunic and smiled at him. "New apprentice?"
>> 
>> "Yes." The boy shouldn't wake lying on his damaged back, but he could hardly turn him over to lie face down in the blood. Carefully, Qui-Gon lifted the limp form and cradled it against his chest.
>> 
>> "A front runner this time?" Pepi's twisted grin mocked him even as she offered the conversation as a way to ground him in the present - rescue him from the terrors he had just been through. She was right, the situation was still not safe enough for him to work through any of that.
>> 
>> "Not exactly."
>> 
>> Her roughened voice rasped out a laugh like a plane across oak. "Figures."
>> 
>> Turning away, she walked to the three craters which now smoked in the floor. While he worked to uncover Obi-Wan, she had piled the blasters together and set them to autodestruct. A sensible action, he thought, half distracted by the boy's limp coldness. Why were there still no signs of life?
>> 
>> Turning the weapons over with her boot, Pepi put her sabre through the few which remained viable. Only when it was done did she give him a sidelong glance - an ugly mix of cowering and defiance she had adopted at age five, and he was sad to see she hadn't grown out of yet. "Not going to say anything? That's a minefull of money I've just blown up."
>> 
>> Both understood that the Council could have recovered half of the resale value of the salvaged goods - that they wouldn't be at all pleased by this.
>> 
>> Like her, he found the Council's acceptance of money from the sale of arms distasteful in the extreme. Like her, he chose not to mention it. "We could hardly carry them."
>> 
>> "True." An old bond flared with laughter in his mind, as she heard what he hadn't said. Once more, he let go of anxiety to give her a smile of complicity. It was very good to see her again.
>> 
>> Across the floor of the cavern movement had begun to herald the revival of the ghouls - a hand scrabbled and subsided, a head raised and fell back. "What about them?" said Pepi.
>> 
>> It would be a simple matter to go through the crowd cutting throats. An extension of the Jedi's usual responsibility of culling the creatures. A protection for the unwary traveller in Coruscant's lower levels.
>> 
>> Looking at the cruel teeth, the obscene faces - such a mockery of human, it was easy to detest the ghouls. They ate each other, they ate the Underdwellers - even those who worshipped them as gods - they crept into lower level apartments and ate the babies out of their cradles... All of that he could put right with a sabre stroke. And the unconscious creatures would feel no pain.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon wiped stiffening blood away from his apprentice's closed eyes. Some of it was the boy's - run down from wounds in his scalp where they had clawed him. Somewhere in the future was a parent he could spare from having to do this with their own child. If he showed mercy to the monsters, he condemned someone, somewhere to the huge anguish of their son's death. How could he do that? How could he do that to anyone?
>> 
>> "It was not your mission to destroy them?" He tried to breathe out the emotion which threatened to overwhelm him at that thought. It would not loose - he could not get it past the aching, hollow place in his chest.
>> 
>> "No." Pepi's scarred face looked tight in the bruise-coloured light of their mingled sabres. Her range of expression was limited - this could have been either concern or surprise.
>> 
>> "Then," he looked past emotion to what he believed, "We should let them alone. We have no right to sacrifice them to an unknown future."
>> 
>> Settling Obi-Wan's weight more firmly against himself he picked the boy up, stood waiting for Pepi to take charge.
>> 
>> "I agree. Besides, just leaving them like this will thin them - those who wake first will eat the others." She lead the way out of the doorway, into a series of tunnels carpeted by slime.
>> 
>> "None of this is their fault, really." Her voice, an alto sanded rough by flames, whispered behind her as she opened a trap door onto what had once been a fire-escape. Now it was an empty artery rising straight up, chimney-black, through hundreds of metres of ruin. The ladder, hammered into the seeping walls, was hung with webs dripping ichor; clogged by dirt. Not even the spiders could survive.
>> 
>> "My mission was to trace the mass movement of blasters to the lower levels. Rumoured sightings of armed ghouls..." Pepi looked up, craning her neck back as if to see the sky. Indigo light from her blade lit only herself. Above her there was no end to the darkness or the rain of decay.
>> 
>> "You succeeded." A prompting only. Pepi's shoulders were bowed down with her achievement. She needed to talk. He gave her space to do so.
>> 
>> "Senator Ga-Gilly Mo'rush is hosting an important party tonight." Outlined in darkness, the shadows on Pepi's twisted cheeks were like the markings of the legendary Sith. Her voice was appropriately freighted with anger. "The ghouls were to be lead up to the Hospitality District and let loose inside the restaurant. They would certainly have killed him. Most of his supporters also."
>> 
>> "And the further slaughter would conceal the motive."
>> 
>> She nodded. Soiled rain dripped coldly down the long shaft above him. The horror of such an assassination attempt made it seem clean in comparison.
>> 
>> "Who would do such a thing?" A rhetorical question - he could think of dozens. Ga-Gilly was a thing the Senate was learning to despise - an idealist.
>> 
>> "That's the worst part." Pepi raised her hood against the foulness and became at once the picture of a perfect Jedi; poised, serene. He could read despair in the set of her hands. "Harith Organa."
>> 
>> "You're mistaken." He didn't mean that as it sounded. Not as a rejection of her worth. It was the edge of worry about Obi-Wan - still indistinguishable from a corpse in his arms - which sharpened his voice. Pepi however received it meekly.
>> 
>> "I feel that also. But the evidence does not support my feelings."
>> 
>> Had it succeeded this ruse would have removed two of the great Statesmen of the Senate. One in death and one in disgrace. Pepi's actions had saved Mo'rush, but if Harith Organa was in truth not responsible - if he had been framed - someone, somewhere would still have cause to celebrate.
>> 
>> _Perhaps you're being paranoid,_ he thought, _If the evidence is overwhelming you need to consider that it might be true. You have trusted too far before and been deceived._
>> 
>> "If I speak," said Pepi miserably, "I condemn a great man. But how can I stay silent?"
>> 
>> He pulled her into an awkward one-sided hug, Obi-Wan boneless between them. Slipping back into the role of Master for her just for this one instant of comfort he said "When you present your evidence to the Council they'll examine it minutely. They're good at that. They will discover the truth. And the truth is never our enemy."
>> 
>> She relaxed a little at that, raising her lidless brown eyes in a quick smile. "It's nice to see you again, Master. Thank you for saving my life."
>> 
>> He shrugged, surprised, "It's what I'm for."
>> 
>> The small movement rolled Obi-Wan's head off his shoulder to loll in neck-stretching discomfort over his arm. "Shouldn't he be waking by now?" Pepi asked, suspiciously.
>> 
>> "Yes."
>> 
>> "Don't tell me he's lost in there? You didn't teach him the way out?"
>> 
>> Guilt, like the zap of a stun-pole, stopping his heart for a moment. The emptiness in his chest echoed with it. If Obi-Wan was lost in his own mind that was _his_ fault. Just as the boy's near fall from the bridge had been his fault. _In trying to protect him I've lead him into danger unprepared._ "I have taught him nothing."
>> 
>> She gave him a look - one that he recognised from his own youth; measuring, considering. But she only said "Just as well he's still under. You wouldn't make him climb with wounds like that."
>> 
>> "No I wouldn't. Is it far?"
>> 
>> "Very. I had to blow up the easier route, so the ghouls wouldn't return that way."
>> 
>> Qui-Gon took off one of his stola. He tore a length from the rags of Obi-Wan's tunic and tied the boy's arms firmly together. Hitching them over his head he hung the body from his shoulders, bound elbows at his throat. Then he tied the stola as a belt around them both. Much more manageable, though less dignified.
>> 
>> Night descended as he thumbed off his sabre, clipped it on his belt. Darkness encouraged the release of emotions. _Safe now. Weep, rage; you're safe now._ But it was lying. He set the temptation aside and began to climb, following the clank of Pepi's boots, the vibration of her swift, unburdened steps towards a still invisible light.
>> 
>> The rungs were slick. Movement made the ladder grate against its rusty supports.
>> 
>> "Watch it!" Pepi called from above. He leaned out, felt the whisper of air as a bolt kicked past his face. Beneath his foot the rails separated from the wall and twisted. Pointless to worry whether the rotting thing would support their combined weight, but - given the choice - he would have picked a nicer place to flirt with death.
>> 
>> Liquid still fell, greasy and foetid, drenching his hair, covering his hands. The itch of it crept beneath his cuffs, slid down his arms. Every grip became uncertain, and he could not trust his own fingers.
>> 
>> Against the back of his neck Kenobi breathed, once, the sudden heat a distraction. "Obi-Wan?" he murmured, but there was no response.
>> 
>> "Tell me about it," Pepi offered - nothing more than a gentle voice falling with the rain.
>> 
>> "About what?"
>> 
>> She snorted comfortably in the darkness, "Your new charity case - your 'not exactly' front runner. The boy. I thought you'd sworn off Padawans. What happened?"
>> 
>> How to sum it all up? He could hardly try, not while he had to focus so intently on the next movement, the next step up. His wrists ached already, and the tickle of the ooze had become a burn from fingertip to elbow. "They were going to send him to Agricorps."
>> 
>> "So?" She slipped into the 'Path of Doubt' exercise easily, questioning his answers, forcing him to refine, rethink, until he reached a pure truth.
>> 
>> "You should have seen him, Pepi..." Bandomeer flashed into his mind; another cramped, filthy space, Obi-Wan offering to die to save others. "So valiant. So certain. I couldn't let that potential go to waste."
>> 
>> "Why not?"
>> 
>> Why not, indeed. Had it just been his own emotions prompting him? His delight in giving the underdog a chance? The anticipated thrill of rubbing the Council's noses in it when Obi-Wan became a knight - 'See what you would have wasted!'? That would be an unworthy motive indeed.
>> 
>> He thought back, analysing feelings, thoughts, actions. "Because it was the right thing to do at that moment."
>> 
>> "How do you know?" There was a certain glee in Pepi's voice at having been allowed to put her old master on the student's end of this exercise. But he forgave her, just as he forgave himself the pride he felt for her. In three questions she had led him to enlightenment.
>> 
>> "The Force guided me."
>> 
>> "But if the Force guided you to be his teacher, why have you not taught him?" When she was pleased her voice took on the timbre of a woodwind instrument. It wound out of the dark sky like a thread of melody on which he could loose his doubts.
>> 
>> _The Force guided me to be his Master. Whether he turns or not is irrelevant. The decision has been made. I must act on it._ "Because I'm a fool."
>> 
>> "Pain makes fools of us all." Pepi murmured. A confession as well as sympathy. They shared the memories quietly, and then she said, unexpectedly fierce, "You're a good Master, you know. Xan made you doubt it. But he was wrong in that, as in so many other things."
>> 
>> Cold, and the fall of poisonous rain. The labour of putting hand over hand, climbing out. "He's dead, Pepi."
>> 
>> "Oh." Pepi's boots stilled, so that he caught up with her. The graze of her hem was a line of fire across his knuckles. "I'm sorry. I hoped..."
>> 
>> "I did too."
>> 
>> They began to climb again, the texture of sightlessness changing slightly - a mocking promise of light at the edge of endurance. Why were Jedi trainees so well muscled? A normal thirteen year old wouldn't be this heavy, surely?
>> 
>> "Well, if you will pick no-hopers you must expect the occasional failure."
>> 
>> His left hand missed its grip. In the nightmare instant of falling he was not a Jedi - no technique saved him, only a blind shoot of terror that made him lunge close and cling. The jerk and recoil of his movement shuddered through the miles of rust beneath him. "Will you stop..." why was it so hard to breathe? "Talking about yourself like that!"
>> 
>> "I thought you said truth was not my enemy?"
>> 
>> Distraction again, as she pretended not to notice his shameful display. What a fine Jedi she was. "Pepi. Just shut up and climb."
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> An alarm was blaring, filling the corridor with stridor. Lights flashed blue through smoke. _Where am I?_
>> 
>> The whole place was set to self-destruct. _I have to get out! Have to... But which way?_
>> 
>> He ran. Was there liquid beneath his feet? They dragged so. And the harder he tried the more they pulled back, so that fear caught him struggling like a fly in amber. Which way?
>> 
>> Passages appeared through the smoke, only to disappear when he had sloshed towards them. The strobe of sirens fractured him into tiny pieces, and he couldn't remember who he was. _But I have to get out!_
>> 
>> It was so cold - lifesupport had failed and the air was slowly turning poisonous around him. "Help me!"
>> 
>> "Obi-Wan?"
>> 
>> He remembered the voice - deep and softly accented. Something about obedience? A title... "Master?" He didn't know what it was supposed to mean, but it was a damn sight better than being in here alone. "Where are you?"
>> 
>> A large presence, silhouetted against the blaze of an opened door. "This way."
>> 
>> As he followed the flick of the shadowy cloak he could feel systems coming back on-line. Air circulating; and then memories, re-engaging in blocks.
>> 
>> Now he was walking in the Temple - the viewers gallery over the main dojo. _How?_
>> 
>> A young woman called him; "Ben?" Such yearning on a face which was the feminine mirror of his own. "Come to me, baby." He turned, felt solidity dissolving into an unfocussed sweep of green. A safety he could not return to. Mother though she was, she was leading him wrong.
>> 
>> No passages now, only the green, the blue wonder of a sky seen through newborn eyes, a painful blaze which must be the sun. _I can't stay here!_ "Master!"
>> 
>> The man who stepped out of the light was certainly Qui-Gon Jinn, but _wrong_. Youthful, clean-shaven, the long glossy hair pulled into a tail down his back and secured with a silver clip.
>> 
>> "Who are you?" Obi-Wan recoiled.
>> 
>> The young knight stopped, puzzled. Then he raised a hand to his own smooth cheek. "Oh," he said, vaguely amused, "Embarrassing, isn't it? In my head I'm still thirty... But it is me. Come on."
>> 
>> "I don't..." On the edge of this primal meadow the smoke and darkness of the dying spaceship still beckoned. He could hide. He probably should. This man was not real.
>> 
>> "None of it is real, Obi-Wan. You're lost in your own mind." The combination of shrug and wry smile was very familiar, "I could hardly get in here physically, could I? Now hurry." He turned, pausing halfway to lift a smirk over his shoulder, "You're wasting Jedi time."
>> 
>> It definitely was Master Jinn.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan followed, and the landscape reformed around him - Temple again, snatches of Phindar, Gala, Telos, Nimgon, and suddenly he was being crushed to the ground; throttled, clawed, teeth tearing the skin from his back...
>> 
>> "Aaah!" He convulsed, trying to buck them off, and found himself falling briefly, jarringly off the bed.
>> 
>> "Whoa, Obi-Wan." Large hands caught his head an instant before it hit the grimy plascrete floor. "Welcome back."
>> 
>> Opening his eyes brought a squalid room into reluctant focus. His master, reassuringly himself, sat cross-legged, face in shadow, the over-curtained window at his back. He seemed to have discarded cloak and overtunic, and he smelled strongly of soap.
>> 
>> A patch of institutional striplighting spilled through the open door. The other Jedi stood there, also lightly dressed, but with her face and head completely covered by the muted shimmer of veil. She was facing outwards, on guard.
>> 
>> "W-where?" When he tried to talk his teeth chattered. Even the marrow of his bones felt icy, and though he could tell the room was suffocatingly warm still his body rejected it and clung to cold. A deep breath brought scents of smoke, incense, rancid flowers and old, spilled liquor. He coughed. He would not try that again.
>> 
>> The bedclothes were plastic; red, easily wipeable, frothed with slightly stained lace. "Ew! Master, where are we?"
>> 
>> "In a cheap brothel," said Qui-Gon calmly, "Can you walk?"
>> 
>> Obi-Wan was shocked speechless. _I heard wrong! No way would he bring me to a..._ "Why?"
>> 
>> "Because I don't imagine we want to stay here any longer than is necessary."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan gave himself a mental shake, checked himself out. The back which he remembered being torn to shreds was now only stiff and tender, like a sunburn. "Yes," he said, trying to rein in horrified curiosity, "I feel fine. But I mean..." He waved a hand towards the highly educational scene painted on the wall; tried to look without looking, "Why?"
>> 
>> "You were injured and we were all covered in toxic waste. This was a safe place to get a bath. The lower levels are - in their own way - more dangerous than the Underworld. I couldn't have healed you on the street."
>> 
>> Thank the Force! That seemed innocent enough - but still... "Couldn't we have just gone to the Temple?"
>> 
>> "Carry your unconscious body for four hours through the rush hour man-jams while our skin dissolved?" Qui-Gon sounded flippant, but looked as though he had just been insulted, "Yes, I suppose I could have."
>> 
>> When Master Jinn was annoyed all the lines of his face hardened, drawing attention to the sheer size of him, all that brutal power. At times it was as though, werewolf like, a rarely glimpsed monster stirred within him, and Obi-Wan saw the man who had hunted his previous apprentice relentlessly across the galaxy - to kill him.
>> 
>> Though he didn't know what he'd done wrong, he was aware he'd gone too far. _I'm sorry, Master. I can be perfect, honest._ He scrambled to his feet and presented the image of an eager Padawan to his master's irritated stare. "I'm ready to go when you are."
>> 
>> He pulled at the pastel blue shirt he was wearing, trying to make it look less ridiculous. The movement released a wave of perfume. The combination of passionberry and mothrepellant made him gag. A small twist of that distaste must have shown, because Qui-Gon's mouth thinned, and he indicated a pile of rubbish in the refuse sack by the door. Two cloaks and three tunics sodden and smoking with filth lay in a pool of blood and ooze. "By all means wear your own clothes if you prefer."
>> 
>> _Force! I'm in trouble._ Trying to be less annoying, Obi-Wan folded his arms, bowed his head, and waited to be commanded. A pattern of cigarilo burns on the floor matched the constellation of the Bantha. He studied them carefully, until Qui-Gon had sighed out his anger.
>> 
>> When he dared to look up he found himself being beckoned over to stand before the tall woman at the door. "Pepi, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi, my Padawan. Obi-Wan, this is Jedi Master Perpetuity Oser."
>> 
>> Master Oser had to bow slightly to take his hand. He realised with a shock that she wore flesh-coloured gloves, fine as skin but slightly cooler. Her face was no more visible up close than it had been at a distance. "Hello," she said, "I'm the apprentice no-one talks about. I'm the success."
>> 
>> That was pointed, though he wasn't sure who at, or who he should be defending. Her presence was lively, but austere, like a cold spring breeze, and he found her invisible face disturbing. This was Master Jinn's first Padawan? She was a little scary too.
>> 
>> "Come, then." Qui-Gon led the way along a grubby corridor lined with closed doors, into a lift that smelled of urine.
>> 
>> Obi-Wan kept his eyes on his boots as they entered the reception area, but the comments still made his face flame, and his stomach was unsettled by shame. _I have done nothing wrong._ He lifted his head and fixed his gaze on his master's hands as they counted out small change, passed it across the chipped desk to the overpainted madame who sat there.
>> 
>> "Thank you for your hospitality," said Qui-Gon, in a gentler tone than he had used with Obi-Wan since he woke. One of the bodyguards behind her sprayed _slab_ -coloured spittle as he laughed at the remark.
>> 
>> The old woman looked surprised but touched by his politeness. She took the credits slowly. "Do come again."
>> 
>> And Obi-Wan felt that his day could not get worse.
>> 
>> The streets were a new oppression. Even the beggars were armed, and he was jostled by thin men with scavenger's eyes. They passed a gang of swoop riders. Obi-Wan could feel the gazes, taking in his master's height, the unwavering confidence of Qui-Gon's stride. The dangerous mystery of Master Oser beside him, the lightsabre at his own belt.
>> 
>> It took almost more control than he possessed to remain disinterested as he passed the predatory stares. And it was impossible not to get twitchy once they had passed the gang and their backs were exposed to blaster fire.
>> 
>> Master Oser leaned down so that her swathed face was near to his. Light filtered through the cer-silk, and he could see a suggestion of a head. It looked human.
>> 
>> "You and I need to have a little talk," she whispered. The threat made the Rider gang seem suddenly tame.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> * * *
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Qui-Gon looked up at the monumental staircase which ran, ziggurat-like, up the front of the Temple. A hooded form he did not know swept down and gave him a nod of recognition before sailing majestically into the crowd.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> He was well aware of how narrowly his party was being watched. Sightseers and tourists swarmed around the building. _There_ was a reporter, who had seen Obi-Wan's oversized shirt and was wondering what it portended. _There_ was a family of rich Biths, about to take a holo of Pepi. _There_ stood a Tiw'lek father and daughter looking lost and worried...
>> 
>> The Force nagged at him - he had a sense that he was missing something important. Too distracted by his own emotions, too annoyed, he was overlooking something obvious, and vital.
>> 
>> To pause here was to invite being mobbed by the idle and curious of a thousand star systems. But it had to be done. Perhaps if he simply waited, the thing would reveal itself.
>> 
>> He was aware of the Tiw'lek man giving him a sidelong look, the faded blue head turning in his direction as if twisted by a torturer. Obi-Wan had gone ahead and now strained forward like a dog on an invisible leash. _So focused on reporting the Nexus that he's missed the Force's call here._ That was a fault which must be corrected.
>> 
>> "Ungrateful little thing, isn't he?" Knowing her master well, Pepi had found a comfortable wall to lean on while she waited for his revelation to manifest itself.
>> 
>> "He was unconscious, Pepi." Qui-Gon defended the boy against the reproaches of his own heart, _I grieved for him, I carried him on my back through a waterfall of acid, I healed him and brought him home._ "He doesn't know what happened, but even if he did, why should he be grateful? It was no more than my duty."
>> 
>> _And the fact that he repayed me by virtually accusing me of immorality just shows how little he knows me. It is pointless to feel insulted._
>> 
>> Yet he _was_ hurt. It seemed he could do nothing right for Obi-Wan; he would never match the boy's expectations of what a Master should be. The constant criticism was wearing. _And now I must face more of the same from the Council._
>> 
>> The Tiw'lek's little girl was tugging at her father's hand, pointing at him. Too plump for health, her face had the nervous cynicism of a much older woman, and her presence in the Force showed the bright deformity of an untrained sensitive. Was she what he was being held here for?
>> 
>> "Place, Padawan."
>> 
>> Obi-Wan's eyes widened at the discipline - in the sunlight they were briefly as blue as his shirt. "Yes, Master." He raced back to take up his place just behind Qui-Gon and to his left.
>> 
>> "Excuse me." The father edged forward, lekku in a knot behind him which spelled anxiety, "Are you a Jedi?"
>> 
>> The man's stance could only be described as cringing - he hated being here, hated Qui-Gon, hated the word 'Jedi', which hissed reluctantly from between his pointed teeth. Something very important must be forcing him past all that, goading him to speak.
>> 
>> Qui-Gon inclined his head, feeling the nagging ease; the sense of relief which told him that this was indeed what he'd been waiting for. "I'm Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. This is Master Oser and Padawan Kenobi."
>> 
>> The man did not look, but the little girl was watching Obi-Wan with a look of worshipful envy that tore his heart. It took no skill to read yearning in every line of her body. Pity made him regret calling Obi-Wan back, confronting her with his - relative - perfection. They were much of an age, and she was, if anything, stronger in the Force than he was. So wasted, and so tragically aware of it.
>> 
>> "My name is Kiew Noyenk." The man had midichlorians enough to fill the Force around him with his own gnawing pain. He carried its aura with him, sucking in happiness like a singularity - giving nothing back but darkness. "This is my daughter Edeen." He wrung his hands, the sharp red nails vivid against his blue skin. "I have another daughter...Oh! my Neeta... And she's been...she's been kidnapped."
>> 
>> His voice trembled, and the weak pink eyes filled with tears. It cost him a great deal to go through this humiliation, in front of a Jedi, Qui-Gon could tell, but he sacrificed everything for his daughter's sake.
>> 
>> In the full gaze of the crowd, the unwinking stare of the reporters' holocameras, Kiew Noyenk went down on his knees in front of Qui-Gon, lifted shaking hands to pluck at the hem of Qui-Gon's tunic. "Please, Jedi Master, please. Find her."


	12. Chapter 12

Qui-Gon breathed out, centred himself; emotionally in tranquillity, spiritually in the Force, physically on the inlaid star in the middle of the chamber. His fingers brushed the folds of his sash, hastily knotted during the brief detour to find quarters, and to replace Obi-Wan's passionberry blue blouse with something more appropriate. It would do.

Like the lowliest initiate awaiting instruction he settled into 'ready' stance, and repeated in his head his own, heretical mantra. _Nothing but the Force. No Council, no Code, no Order, no Qui-Gon Jinn. Only the Force._ He would need this reminder soon - he didn't need to be attuned to the future to predict that.

"Pleased, the Council are, with this Nimgon treaty." Yoda's ears were high and his large eyes moved from Qui-Gon to Obi-Wan as if he hoped to see a visible link there. Outwardly perfect, and silent as a Padawan should be, Obi-Wan's pleasure at this compliment was loud, bringing brief smiles like a rush of shooting stars across the chamber.

"You've proved you can work together once more, after the incident on Melida/Daan." Micah Giiett's plump face was pleased as he took up the task of speech seamlessly, but his jade green eyes were cool, preoccupied.

"In that case," Qui-Gon said, seizing this rare moment of good humour, "I'd like to commend Obi-Wan for his handling of the situation while I was injured, and humbly request that his status as a full Jedi Padawan be restored."

Master Windu, youngest and newest member of the Council, stiffened at the words 'humbly request'. A perceptive man, clearly, but a suspicious one. _I'm becoming obvious,_ thought Qui-Gon, amused.

"So certain you are?"

"Yes, my Master. I am certain about Obi-Wan. He deserves to be reinstated. He deserves his chance at knighthood."

Astonished joy from behind him, and he felt rebuked; _Didn't he know this? But I told him on Telos._

"Certain about Xanatos you were too."

Sometimes it was hard to believe the old creature was not being deliberately cruel. Qui-Gon knew it was an exercise, like Pepi's. He was used to it; absorbing the accusation, considering, replying out of his core convictions, but Obi-Wan was not, and this sentence had cut him deeply. _Neither of us need extra doubt at this time._

But Yoda had challenged him. Yoda wanted him standing firm on the bedrock of his faith. It was a test. Very well then. "Xanatos also deserved his chance."

He knew he'd appalled them from the silence. Then "Have you learned nothing?" Evan Piell burst out, single eye glittering with contempt. "I thought when you refused to take on another learner that you had finally learned caution. It seems I was wrong."

Qui-Gon settled his weight a little more firmly, feeling entrapped, forced into giving pain against his will. _I'm sorry, Obi-Wan._ He could not reply to the Council with the words both they and Obi-Wan wanted from him. He could not say he _knew_ the boy would not turn. He'd lost that certainty with Xan. They would have to settle for the truth.

"My caution, Master Piell, did not proceed from wisdom, but from injury." He paused, looking out at the skyscape - sun on glass - wishing for wings. "Life is risk. But I have learned not to let the possibility of failure overwhelm the possibility of success.

"Hmn." There was a gnarled look to Yoda's swamp-green face. Appreciation, disapproval, affection, exasperation all in one. Qui-Gon felt the brief nostalgic tug of childhood at the sight, and knew that he had both passed and failed the test.

Obi-Wan's turbulent emotions were like a small cyclone. Their discharge lifted the hair on the back of his neck. Of course Kenobi would read his resignation to the future as active mistrust, and feel rejected. It was Obi-Wan's pattern. _I will explain later. But I can't say what I don't mean._

"Possibility of the Temple being destroyed, there is. Not likely it is. Not likely is Obi-Wan's turning. Agree with you we do. Reinstated, Padawan Kenobi is."

 _Now that between us we've taken all the joy out of it for him._ "Thankyou, Masters."

It was bright and warm inside the room. With the open windows on every side it was like standing among the clouds. He was among twelve of the most powerful and accomplished of the Order. Why then was he on edge, as if - just beneath hearing - someone scraped a nail along the blackboard of life?

Was it because on the entire Council there was not one other Living Force adept? Was the discomfort he felt merely the oppression of the Unifying side? But why? The two sides of Force should be complimentary. How could they possibly be so out of balance that they were at war with each other?

Master Adinaiu raised her blonde head, fixed a dilated gaze on his face. "The tapestry is cut, and the threads fray into darkness. The web unravels on the loom..."

She shuddered and her slate coloured eyes focused suddenly. "Forgive me. A vision. Something Master Jinn was thinking." An eyebrow arched in inquiry, the only movement of her serene face, but her hands gave her away, rising to cover the tattoos on her cheek, as if she was trying to hide.

"I was thinking that the Force was out of balance. Wondering why only the Cosmic side is represented on the Council."

Her words touched off a nameless dread in him; was there something wrong with the nature of reality, the very shape of existence? He silenced himself ruthlessly, trying to persuade the vague realisation into more definite shape...

"The Cosmic side dominates because the Cosmic side is more important," said Saesee Tiin impatiently.

The moment passed - a stain lifted from the day's brightness, washed away, and the chamber was once more a pale oasis in the sky.

"And because the Living Force does not produce reliable Jedi." Councillor Rancisis smoothed the hair on his forearms, and smiled as though no insult was meant. But Qui-Gon was still trying to discern the shape and meaning of that vanished warning - too preoccupied for petty wordplay.

"Not always so, it was. Before the Sith wars more equally spread were the gifts of the Force. Think on this I will, Master Adinaiu, but for now, more pressing matters there are."

A general stir passed through the room, and an air of having dispensed with the pleasantries, getting down to business.

"This 'Nexus' you encountered," Giiett took up a datapad. The shaved stripes through his dense black hair reflected afternoon light as if glimpses of droid showed beneath the skin. "It was able to exert mind control over sixty eight delegates _and_ two Jedi, simultaneously?"

Qui-Gon nodded, refolding his hands, abandoning his quest to make sense of the vision - understanding would come, or it would not - concentrating on the moment.

"And it was able to do this through hyperspace?"

"My feelings tell me that is the case, though I have no evidence."

"Your intuition we do not question, Master Jinn. Worrying this is indeed. Attack anywhere it could in future. And unknown its motives remain?"

"I had the impression, my Master, that the attack on Nimgon was a... a test run. That the more serious purpose would be revealed later."

"Playing with you, it was, when almost kill you it did?"

"Yes, I believe so."

Whatever else they thought of him, the Council had learned to respect his ability to survive. Unacknowledged, fear thrilled through the circle like an electric current.

In the pause, Qui-Gon took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder at Obi-Wan. He saw with regret how impeccably behaved the boy was, how masklike was his expression of calm. _On the defensive already, and I haven't started yet..._

Obi-Wan should be protected from what he was about to do. "Masters," he said, "As you know, my apprentice is highly attuned to the Cosmic Force. It is his impression that the Nexus forms a Galaxy-wide and long-lasting threat. I concur in this."

Obi-Wan looked up. _Astonishment, confusion. Hope, tattered and feeble from being rebuffed so many times._

Guilt settled in the pit of Qui-Gon's stomach. _He doesn't believe my praise?_ And then anger - a small point of anger _Yet I've offered him nothing but acceptance since Bandomeer. What more can I do?_

 _You could put him first,_ his heart suggested seductively, _As you failed to do with Xan. This one could come first._

 _Before the Force?_ He felt like a monster for the disappointment he was about to inflict. But Obi-Wan was not just a child, he was a Jedi Padawan. He would have to understand.

_Nothing before the Force, not even him._

"Wise your apprentice is, Master Jinn. Our top priority it must be to locate this 'Nexus'. Experience you have had of fighting it, useful that may be. Remain here you will until it is found, then your task it will be to neutralise it."

Obi-Wan sighed behind him, satisfied, vindicated, eager. The point of guilty anger became a flame. "I'm sorry, Master, but I can't."

"Face it again, you cannot?"

"I can't remain here and wait. I have already agreed to go on another mission."

An explosion of outrage all the more searing for being silent. Master Windu rolled his eyes, Master Yoda's claws tightened on his stick - that was all. Yet Qui-Gon felt as though he stood unprotected in the middle of a fusion reactor. Their gazes might have vaporised bone.

"What do you mean?" Evan Piell asked at last, the fringes of his ears trembling.

"I have been asked to find a kidnapped child, and have agreed to do so. With your permission I will depart at once."

Obi-Wan's gasp of disbelief mirrored the Council's. Forgetting himself he took a step forward, eyes blazing. "You promised we'd be going after the Nexus. You _promised_ me. It's important!"

It was a mark of how shaken the Councillors were that no one rebuked the Padawan for speaking out of turn. Instead, "Correct young Kenobi is. More important is the Nexus. Your stolen one, a planetary heir it is? A senator's child?"

 _As if that should make a difference!_ "No, just one of the common people of the Republic, whom we are pledged to protect."

"Lecture me on duty you will not, Qui-Gon Jinn. Brainless are you? Serve the people best you will how - by neutralising a device of massive evil, or by saving an unimportant child?"

Almost exactly the words which had come out of Obi-Wan's mouth on Nimgon. Ugly, impossible words that he would not, could not agree with. He met their outrage with his own. "Since when is the life of a child unimportant?"

"Since set beside a threat to the galaxy it is."

Qui-Gon lifted his chin, looked out at the afternoon traffic - shuttling in such straight lines it might have been machined onto the clouds. From a level below them a hawk-bat took flight, it's irregular course buffeted by exhaust fumes and slipwash. _You and I alike, little friend._

"If I don't go after the Nexus you will send someone else," he said. "But if I don't go after the child, who will?"

"I don't know why we're even discussing this." Evan Piell narrowed his eye, scar tissue puckering over the second. "Master Jinn does not have the right to promise Jedi aid to anyone. He knows this. Those decisions belong to the Council and the Senate. As for this ridiculous quest - we do not have the resources to track down every missing person in the Republic. It was foolish of him to offer. His apprentice shows more sense."

 _Too angry to even speak to me,_ Qui-Gon thought, annoyed. In reply he shifted his stance, lengthening it, turning the right foot slightly inwards. A change from 'ready' to 'immovable' stance. Not the most subtle of comments, perhaps, but better than shouting.

Yoda sighed and rapped the end of his cane against the inlaid floor. "Enough! Correct Master Piell is, Qui-Gon. A strong Jedi you are, but not yours to waste is your strength. To the galaxy it belongs, to the Order. A servant you are, Qui-Gon. Forget it not you should."

 _Yes, a servant, but not yours._ "I do not forget it, Master. The Force is directing me in this."

"Easy to say, that is, hard to tell with certainty. So sure you are that it is not your own heart you follow?

 _What do you follow, Master, if not your own intellect?_ Qui-Gon struggled with unexpected fury, not so much that they didn't believe him, but that they hadn't even bothered to check. _Is it *assumed* that I'm lying? Assumed I'm incompetent? Or don't they *care* what the Force wants?_ "Sometimes my heart and the Force are in accord."

"Not one of those times this is. Forbid you this pointless quest we do, Qui-Gon. Remain here you will and await orders regarding the Nexus."

He opened his mouth, but there was nothing more to say. No arguments would convince when they so clearly had reason on their side. The only thing he could offer was his conviction of the Force's Will, and that had just been discredited.

Either he submitted to them now, or they would punish him later. He hoped he had distinguished his own views clearly enough from Obi-Wan's so they would not punish the boy as well. But he couldn't be sure. It was another guilt fissioning into anger in his chest. His tight mental shields suddenly felt claustrophobic. _I have to meditate and release this. Soon._

He slumped, bowed, "I hear and obey my Master," and hoped that would be enough to get him back through the doors.

 

* * *

 

"It's going to be hard telling the Noyenks that you can't go after all," said Obi-Wan in a tone of sympathy as the massive doors hissed shut behind them. Obi-Wan was looking almost gleeful, Qui-Gon thought, as he slammed the call for the lift. Very happy indeed for a Padawan who'd just watched his master's character being destroyed, by people who were supposed to be friends.

"Yes," he said, trying to restrain his anger - it was like trying to shape water with his hands. "Which makes it fortunate that I'm not going to tell them any such thing."

Obi-Wan's quick step stuttered on the threshold of the lift, so that Qui-Gon had to pull him in before the floor fell out from under him. "You lied to the Council?" The storm grey eyes were shocked. He was so much their creature that sometimes it hurt to be around him.

"I hear and obey my Master. And my Master is the Force. They know that already, even if they chose not to believe it."

In the close confines of the lift it was impossible for either of them to step back from their mutual animosity. The bond had turned into a feedback loop of anger, scaling up through the pitches to a peak neither of them would be able to bear. "You _said_. You promised you were waiting to act on the Nexus. That's what you _said_!"

_And you're so ready to think I lied._

"I said I'd be alert to the Force's will as regards the Nexus. I am. It wants me to go after the child."

When the doors opened on their level it was like being able to breathe again. Obi-Wan plunged through, body language shouting a biting retort, but Qui-Gon noticed he didn't speak until he had settled on the most meaningful question. "Why?"

"I don't know," he tried to break the loop, speak gently - this was after all a boy who was very dependant on his approval. "I don't know the purposes of the Force. Perhaps it wants a different team assigned? Perhaps we're being protected. Perhaps the Council will still be searching for the Nexus by the time we get back. 'Why' was never my talent, Obi-Wan."

"It doesn't want another team. It wants _us_."

The wave of combined irritation almost made him act. Almost made him reprimand the boy for speaking out of turn. Except that finally Obi-Wan was speaking a language he could understand. Hard as pulling a planet out of orbit he eased down shields over his anger, contained it. He could not release it, yet. There were things to do first.

"If the Force wants us then it will have us." He brought his breathing under control, "At the appropriate time. Even the Council acknowledge that time is not now. Why should we remain here in idleness when we could be doing something constructive in the meantime?"

 _Obi-Wan's top lip disappears entirely when he disapproves._ Qui-Gon noticed, focusing on the little detail in an effort to sidetrack himself. He was aware that beneath his own annoyance lay a well of affection whose surface had barely been ruffled by this.

He would have liked to think there could be an answering fondness in the boy, but doubted it. Doubted he had ever been anything other than a last hope, seized out of desperation. Like the Council, Obi-Wan too wished he would be someone other than who he was.

Qui-Gon didn't want to make this test - he dreaded the answer, especially when he felt so friendless - but it was better to know. "Obi-Wan, you asked me to be your Master. Do you now regret it?"

Obi-Wan looked shocked to the core. "No! No. Never."

"Then stop trying to turn me into Yoda. Learn what _I_ have to teach."

Completely the wrong thing to say. A blast of outrage exploded from the boy like the wavefront of a thermal detonator.

 _Oh, shut up, Jinn, until you can say something sensible,_ Qui-Gon thought, defeated. He didn't venture another comment until they were home.

 

* * *

 

Kiew and Edeen Noyenk sat uncomfortably in the bare quarters while Temple droids worked flawlessly around them. Machines made the beds, took belongings out of storage and arranged them to duplicate the pattern in which they'd been left. It was not within their programming to notice the visitors' extreme unease, but Qui-Gon did.

Perhaps the silent droids frightened them, he thought, or perhaps it was the power of the Temple, pressing on their untrained sensitivity like a brilliant light on the eyes of a convalescent.

Qui-Gon breathed out and performed two rounds of 'To storm the stronghold' - a mental kata designed to harness fierce emotion. It worked about as well as trying to catch a hurricane in a butterfly net.

"They've said you can't go." Edeen rose, her lekku twisting over each other like wringing hands. As strong as she was, her insight was not surprising.

"But I will be going nevertheless." He hated the look in her eyes - the look of something maimed, eaten by a hunger she was unable to sate. "It will just take slightly longer to arrange transport, and you will not be able to stay here while you wait."

He caught the look of reluctant curiosity between the two children - envy facing pity. Each saw in the other what they could so easily have become. _That could have been you, Obi-Wan. Now tell me I shouldn't fight for her._

"We're not beggars," said Kiew thinly, "And we wouldn't want to stay here." He had a small talent - just enough for its frustration to turn him bitter. He was lucky, compared with his daughter.

"I need to perform a shared memory trance with Edeen. I may know these pirates."

"No!" As if he'd heard something indecent Kiew rose and strode to Edeen's side, draping a head-tail protectively over her. "You're not touching her. I know what you Jedi are like; getting inside people's minds, twisting them. She's not going to end up some brainless slave like _him_. He nodded at Obi-Wan, who had settled into perfection by the door - hands in his sleeves, face a complete blank.

 _If you only knew..._ The injustice of Kiew's fear cracked the shell Qui-Gon had placed about his anger. Something pushed out, like a dragon hatching.

"I'd like to, Da. I wanna see how it works."

She was a musician who had been raised in silence. He so much wanted to offer her an instrument and teach her to play.

"No. None of that Jedi stuff. You're _normal_ Edeen. You're not like them."

"Edeen will never be normal," _Calm, be calm._ "Edeen is extraordinary, and she's suffering."

"You're not getting her." Kiew pulled the girl close, shrinking from the Jedi Master as if from the leader of some brainwashing cult.

 _But isn't that exactly what we are?_ "Be at ease, Ser Noyenk. Though I might wish to, I cannot take her. We don't steal children. And she's too old."

He went down on one knee in front of the girl's chair and felt the clawing wave of her need intensify. _How does she live with it? How does he not see it?_ "Is there anything you can tell me then, which might help?"

She tilted her face up as if basking, and smiled. "I thought about it loads. I kind of knew you should see this." Pulling a sheet of flimsy from her pocket she handed it to him, taking care that their hands would not touch.

The drawing showed a winning sabacc hand over the image of a glowing stone. He recognized it immediately. "This comes from the 'Fool's Array' casino on Skip 5. Smuggler's Run."

"It was a patch one of them had sewn on his sleeve."

"You have good instincts. This will certainly help."

The Force compressed around her, almost as frustrated with her inability to reach it as she was. He felt it like a hand of light in the small of his back, pushing him forward to give help. "It may take a few days to find and ready a ship. In that time, Edeen, will you allow me to teach you some simple techniques?"

Her father's response was to drag her to her feet. He was trembling, pointed teeth bared. "She's _my_ daughter. You keep away from her."

"Just some simple things; centring, dispersal. To give her control over what's happening to her. Can't you _see_ it's devouring her?"

"There's nothing wrong with her! She's normal. Not like you or your zombie boy. She's _normal_!"

The door slid open for him. He pulled Edeen out by the arm. Qui-Gon thought he had never seen a more profound look of defeat than that on the face of this ten year old girl.

 _Damn it!_ He couldn't steal her, couldn't heal her without her father's permission, _Damn us for not caring. And damn you Jinn for being so useless. Damn you for being powerless. Damn *everything*!_

Their shadows were still on the doorstep when Obi-Wan stepped forward, incandescent with rage. "I don't _believe_ you!"

But Qui-Gon wanted to hit something. He wanted to put his fist through something and feel it break. "Go and find Pepi, Obi-Wan, I can't talk to you now."

He turned his back, and the boy's laser-hot gaze raked his spine as he fled.

 

* * *

 

The stone meditation garden was full of silence, so that Obi-Wan felt as if his very aura was too noisy for it.

Master Oser's sleekly veiled head lifted and turned as his footsteps broke her contemplation. He supposed she was looking at him, but couldn't tell. _Why would she bother anyway?_ At this moment, Pepi seemed a living metaphor to him. _That's what he wants from an apprentice. He wants me to be faceless._

But even that wasn't true. Even his perfection seemed to do nothing but irritate. He didn't know what to try any more.

Pepi patted the bench beside her. It was stone, mossy. The high ceiling of the huge room was hidden by artificial cloud. Blurred light was a _faux_ -sun to their left; a simulation of dawn on some quiet, grey world. Mist curled around the stones and dripped in gentle music from the beards of olive-drab and jade lichen, the old, stunted trees.

When Obi-Wan sat he could see dawn's shadow, etched in black on all the lines of raked gravel. Straight lines, rippled by the embedded rocks, like the Cosmic Force of harmony, perturbed by the Living Force of planets, or of men. Sometimes - such was the intricacy of the pattern - the smallest thrown stone made larger ripples than the stationary boulders.

"Just look for a moment," said Pepi. Her lowered voice still sounded sore, but there was none of the reproach he had expected from her. Was this...a _lesson_?

Determined to do well in front of his Master's first apprentice he composed himself, looked at the rocks, and found they were telling him exactly what Qui-Gon had. Sometimes the pebbles made the biggest splash. He could actually _see_ it happening; written in the earth before him.

 _Maybe the Force *does* want us to chase this pebble first? Maybe he's right?_ The surprise he felt at the thought was a revelation in itself. _Shouldn't I have *expected* him to be right? He is my Master. I should trust him to know these things..._ He followed the thought to an astounding conclusion. _I should trust him._

Oh, Force! This was an uncomfortable insight. _I accused him of not trusting me. And then I didn't trust him; to keep me on; to come for me in the tombs on Nimgon; to follow the Force's prompting about the Nexus. I really thought he was the kind of man who'd go back on his word, abandon me, and betray the Force. And he knows it! No wonder he's angry._

Remorse hurt, and he didn't want to explore it. Not while Master Oser's invisible gaze might be examining his every expression. _Alright, so I haven't been faultless. But neither has he. His Master's oath is to teach. So why does he give *me* nothing but excuses? He'll teach that Edeen creature, but he won't teach me?_

"Picture the garden as water," Pepi's grated alto sanded across his temper, smoothing it for a while. "Do you see? Everything has its place and the ripples are tranquil."

"I see." In the risen light the gravel had taken on a pewter sheen. Easy to imagine it as a sheet of placid liquid.

"Now take one of the stones out. What happens?"

Suck and hollow - a vacuum quickly filled by disturbed dirt. Turbulence, whirlpools and waves throughout the whole pond. Then a settling, sediment sinking, the crashing discord smoothing into a new shape, a new calm. Obvious.

Pepi straightened her shoulders, hitched round to face Obi-Wan more squarely. "Did Qui-Gon kill him?"

"What?" The sudden turn in the conversation threw him; he was still trying to figure out the 'missing stone' lesson.

"Did our Master kill Xanatos?"

"Yes," he said, automatically, and then training in exactness caught up with him, "Well, no. Not really."

"Which?"

"He killed himself rather than come back with us."

The look on Xanatos' face had been one of insane triumph; as if his death was the worst thing he could do to Qui-Gon. Did that make sense? "He stepped back into a pit full of acid. Master Jinn wasn't quick enough to catch him."

And yet Qui-Gon had tried. Why? If he hated the man, even if he felt nothing for him, why that instinctive movement to save?

"Chuuba!" Pepi whispered, "That's almost worse."

In the mercury-silver light Obi-Wan half expected to see her breath ruffle the surface of the garden. The image of the uprooted stone recurred - the turmoil of displaced water; slap of waves. Had Pepi meant that Xanatos was the stone, torn from Qui-Gon's life, leaving necessary chaos in its wake? That Obi-Wan should wait, and things would smooth out again once the grief and loss had passed?

To suppose such a thing was to suppose that even a Jedi Master was not beyond emotion. It was to suppose a thing totally against the code. No. The analogy must not hold. She must be wrong.

Pepi had put her hands to her cheeks. The veil glinted like dew, pulled tight over the curves of eyebrows, cheekbones, a curiously shallow nose. Not *quite* human, then.

"Master Jinn said it wouldn't haunt him." Obi-Wan offered, unsure if it would be taken as comfort or as criticism.

"But not that he would be unaffected. To grieve is to heal, Obi-Wan. Besides, I'm sure he feels he owes Xan his sorrow. No one else in the galaxy will mourn the little bastard."

Either she didn't understand _anything_ or the shape of his situation was completely different from what he had believed. Obi-Wan wasn't sure he liked either option.

"Maybe you should start looking at him as a person, and not just as your passport to knighthood."

Oh right! Obi-Wan had quite liked her up to that point; she'd helped. But he didn't have to sit and take personal abuse from her. He could go and get that from Qui-Gon. Getting up, he bowed. "Thankyou for your wisdom, Master Oser.

Pepi's head raised. He had the distinct impression that under the veil she was smiling, or smirking. "Any time, little brother."

 _Masters! Force! Who needs them?_ But as he left the meditation garden it wasn't Pepi's rebuke that followed him, it was the picture of an island being torn from the lake and thrown away.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan heard the snap of blasters first. As he turned the corner the corridor's drab walls were angry with reflections of red light, so thick as to be almost continuous. The air tingled with the smell of ozone. Static brushed like a living thing along his nerves. Confusion and anger skittered into excitement as he slid into the shielded viewing area of one of the private training rooms.

In the centre of the blast screened space, Qui-Gon fought fifteen training remotes. They floated around him - lethal, agile - in an almost unbroken sphere of searing fire. Changing direction, angle, velocity with perfect randomness between each shot, they whined as they fired and recharged. There was no pattern to their attack. Nothing to predict or exploit.

When a droid was hit by a reflected shot it would deactivate for ten seconds, leaving a sliver of safety in the firestorm. In those narrow spaces Qui-Gon stepped and wove the light as if it was a dance he faced, not death.

He moved with a grace astonishing in a man his size. Fast - making it look effortless, but pushing himself. The green blade wove sigils of light, overwrote them, with almost invisible speed. His hair, flying, clung along his cheek, but there was no sign on his enraptured face that he felt its irritation.

 _This is meditation for him,_ thought Obi-Wan, looking at the expression of calm purity, feeling through the bond the residue of anger being burnt away, its place being taken up by something still.

Peace in the centre of the storm. It was the whole dichotomy of the Jedi. It was the spirit of the Code, in rapid, decisive action.

Obi-Wan's anger faded as he watched. _I want that. I want him to teach me that._ And it could not happen unless he managed to repair what was broken between them. Accusations would not help.

He waited as his Master put away the training remotes, pulled the damp hair away from his face and retied it. The sounds of the Temple - hum of air and power, muffled footsteps, distant conversation - formed an overlay on deep silence.

Nothing about Qui-Gon broke that silence as he came over to the bench, sat down beside Obi-Wan with his large hands splayed and his head bent. He brought with him some of the charged calm of his battle, like the freshness just after a thunderstorm has passed. _What do I say to him?_

"Master?"

"Yes, Padawan?" Even the soft voice was remote with peace. Obi-Wan felt suddenly guilty for disturbing that profound communion with the Force, but this had waited long enough. No more.

"Master, I'm sorry." He hadn't thought of it beginning with an apology, yet there the words were, fluent, as if he'd rehearsed them. Perhaps he had, subconsciously, in all these long weeks of doubt.

Qui-Gon lifted his head with a look of surprise. He too had obviously not expected those words. _Don't let him talk, or I won't get it out._

"I know you didn't want me in the first place." He gestured furiously - there were long subtexts to that sentence which he couldn't quite get into words. "I mean, you weren't the only one who didn't want me; none of them did. But you gave me a chance, and I wrecked it."

 _Don't talk. Don't talk,_ he pleaded silently in the pause, while all the memories surged and left him feeling hollow. Qui-Gon, an expert at reading silences, said nothing, but he looked away, and that made everything easier.

"I said I was totally committed. I said you could trust me, and then I dumped you in the middle of a war." How terrible it sounded, put like that. Part of him wanted to make excuses, but Master Jinn knew the excuses just as well as he did.

"Then when I mucked that up. When I changed my mind - again - I expected you to take me back, like nothing had changed. And you did."

A bald summary of all that faltering, all that doubt, but accurate enough in its way. An ache in his fingers surprised him - he looked down to see his hands wringing the hem of his tunic, knuckles white. _And I hoped I was looking calm!_ He thought of unclenching the fists, but why? They expressed his feelings much more accurately than he could.

"I got used to the idea that no matter what I did, you'd be there for me. You'd forgive me."

Now the challenge - had he softened it enough? Would it look like just a selfish demand? "But now it's you who's gone away."

A stir of response. He flung out a hand to stop his master speaking. "Oh, you let me tag along behind you, like some kind of inconvenient bag you can't figure out where to put down. But you're not _there_ any more. I ask you to teach me things and you say 'tomorrow'. When's it going to be tomorrow?"

The anger of facing a situation he didn't quite understand, of not having the solution, coloured his voice. He heard himself sounding aggressive, when in fact he felt like crying.

Qui-Gon opened his mouth, breathed in, his harsh, expressive face showing understanding and ...contrition? Obi-Wan interrupted for the last time, getting the last of the poison out, getting the wound clean.

"I don't know what to do. I know you've got every reason not to trust me, but I can't go on like this. Show me what to do to make it better. I'll do anything."

A silence. Obi-Wan was conscious of the weight of the building around him, like the weight of the Jedi tradition, ancient, elegant, and so heavy. He was conscious too of Qui-Gon beside him, settling his head into his hands, all the glory of strength and power transmuted into weariness. _Did I do that to him?_

"Obi-Wan, when Cerasi died, how did you feel?"

It was like being slapped. Whatever he had expected - a test, maybe, some difficult task he could take on to prove himself - this was not it. Only his newfound resolution to trust made him tell himself this wasn't an attack.

"Did you go on with your duties? Talk to people?"

He didn't want to remember this; the madness, the desolation, of those days, but he _had_ said 'I'll do anything.' "No. I ran 'til I fell down, then I hid, and then I got up and ran some more."

He watched his master's hands, they tightened, pushing back through the long brown hair as if Qui-Gon was trying to wipe something away. It struck Obi-Wan suddenly that this was not the posture of a man at peace with himself. _Is it like Pepi said? Is he in pain too?_

That thought violated the centre of his universe. Qui-Gon was not vulnerable. Judgemental, yes; stubborn, inflexible. Not vulnerable.

But his master had propped his head against the wall, was watching the dust circle in the sunlight, and talking very softly, as if to himself.

"I carried him into the Temple in my arms. He was eighteen months old, and so excited, but the journey was long. He fell asleep on my shoulder as we waited to debark, and I carried him through the doors, like the son I'd always dreamed of."

He risked a sideways glance at Obi-Wan, the wry smile which so often covered humour now covering an anguish Obi-Wan had never suspected. "They seem to think that because, at the end, he was an enemy of the Jedi, I should feel satisfaction now he's dead."

"Xanatos." Like the rest of the Temple Obi-Wan had always thought the force which drove Qui-Gon to hunt his evil apprentice was vengeance - for the betrayal, for the times when Xan had turned on him, tried to kill him. That thought had shaped his understanding of the bond between himself and his master; there had always been a fear underneath the need, a sense that if he went too far the same power would be turned against him.

"If only all other choices could be taken away from him, I was sure he'd turn back. He'd see he was wrong. He'd come back to us. I had no idea how much that hope sustained me. But now it's gone...."

The smile died, the mouth compressing into a line of misery. "I had to kill my son, Obi-Wan. I hope you never understand what that feels like."

His throat closed. Force! Suppose everyone had expected him to be pleased at Cerasi's death. Suppose they had thought it would make no difference... "It wasn't me at all, was it? You were just hiding."

"Running, and hiding and running some more."

Obi-Wan took a shaky breath, wanting to say sorry, but he had wasted those words already. They wouldn't help again.

"But not just that." Qui-Gon sighed, mastering his grief - his face smoothing, the smile returning like a banner of defiance to the universe. "I was scared too."

"You!" He was sure this was a joke - an attempt to break the tension, get things back to normal. The idea that Qui-Gon could be scared was too stupid to be anything else.

"I took that bright, brilliant child, trained him, and somewhere along the way he fell, and I didn't catch him. Something I did, or didn't do, sent all that glory into the dark. I have been so terrified of doing the same to you."

He gave a small snort of laughter, rueful, but warm, and Obi-Wan felt like a diver, coming out of deep water into the air.

"I don't think I could survive killing you too, Obi-Wan."

Could he bear it, that he had a master who was human, who could be hurt and afraid, just like himself? A master whom _he_ could hurt, sometimes without even trying. What a strange thought...

"But," Qui-Gon sat up straight, Force like a globe of light around him, "You heard what I said to the Council. I've had enough of fear. Yes there's risk. Sometimes not to take the risk is worse than to fail. The prize is worth it."

He rose, stretched out his right hand. Obi-Wan took it, and was pulled to his feet.

"Today is tomorrow. I want you do the kata 'Three comets at aphelion'. Your stances are appalling."

"'Three comets!'" Joy came out sounding like indignation, "That's a kata for babies!"

The mischief was back, gleaming behind Master Jinn's blue eyes, "Then you'll find it easy."


	13. Chapter 13

Kirru's wild spring sent him hurtling across the room, the knife balanced in his hand. Sharp as obsidian, the blade sliced towards the Prophet's throat. The hooded shape recoiled in a movement full of panic.

 _Yes!_ Fabric parted under the knife, then flesh. _Yes! This is for my mother._ But then the Prophet's white hand came up, opened, loosing a power great enough to shake mountains. Kirru was hurled backwards, slammed against the wall, blacking out for an instant under the weight of that implacable will. The knife fell with a ringing clatter. Blood burst from the boy's nose and dripped on the marble floor. His jaw spasmed and his teeth met in his own tongue, filling his mouth with copper warmth.

Unable to move or breathe, he hung against the wall, an invisible hand crushing his throat. Grey lights exploded behind his eyes as he choked, but he was not permitted even to convulse.

"You...cut me." The Prophet said, astonished, "You cut _me_." His voice was soft, full of sheer unbelief. He fingered the sliced fibres of his robe, pressed them into the darkness of his hood, held up the bloody fingertips as if staring at a new universe.

Just briefly, the grip which held Kirru wavered. As he gasped for breath the boy had an absurd idea - this man, the one who had murdered his whole family, was squeamish, unable to stand the sight of his own blood. A section of Kirru's mind, divorced from the struggle to live, felt contempt and triumph. It was something of a victory after all. _At least I scared him._ He would die content.

The hood turned his way and lifted, he saw a cleanly shaven white chin, a mouth shaped for good humour, but bloodless, white as the cheeks. Eyes were nothing more than a stir and glimmer in the shadow.

Now Kirru would have swallowed if he could. In that moment, something about the Prophet had changed - a veil had been dropped - and evil, concentrated as acid, hovered about him, its power mantling him with dark wings.

_Go away!_

The pale mouth smiled chillingly. At once the pressure on Kirru eased. He tried not to, but his body automatically gasped for air, shuddering in its relief. Traitor piece of flesh. He had wanted to pass out.

"You cut me, child. You need to be taught a lesson."

"I need to be taught how to do it better!" Kirru grated - his mouth burning with pain and his throat bruised. He'd be damned before he showed this man fear. His ancestors at least demanded that of him.

The cold smile grew, more full of teeth than the pit of Sarlacc. "You need to learn who your Master is." Those sleek disembodied hands raised, put down the hood with delicate care. Plump, kindly, patrician, the face revealed was as benign as that of a favourite uncle. It was white, with thick white hair and eyes as frozen as the Spirit of the Snow.

Kirru had dreamed about this face, believing it to be his own invention. He had put words into its mouth - the only words of comfort which had ever meant anything to him. His Master. It was his imaginary Master.

Why had he ever thought they couldn't steal anything more from him? Now they'd taken even his most private hope and twisted it, mocking him.

"I _thought_ you would know me." The Prophet said with satisfaction. His voice was not right. Kirru had never imagined this shard-filled syrup, which promised sweetness and delivered only pain. He had not forseen the corruptness of it, a maggoty, seething sort of voice, fit for a tomb.

Revulsion swept every emotion away before it like a flash flood. "No. You are _not_ my Master, and you _never_ will be."

Kirru thought about the Jedi he had seen in the Eye. Lean and hard where the Prophet was soft, but with a spirit of quiet kindness from which the Prophet had recoiled. They were almost exact opposites. _I dreamed of being a Jedi,_ he told himself sternly, _Not of this._

_But if this is the truth, maybe the rest of it was just fantasy?_

He hated not being whole, not knowing what to believe. It was the Prophet who had done this to him. He hated the Prophet.

"That Jedi," he said, with a rush of determined belief, "He's going to come for you. He's going to come here and rescue me." Insight filled the moment with strange joy - this was what his visions had meant, of course. Not that the Prophet would be his master, but only that he would _lead_ the Jedi to Kirru. It made sense now.

Excitement was so strange to his fear-soaked body that he barely recognised it. He had been gored by hatred and revenge so long, it was...bizarre to feel something pleasant. _This is the path to my knighthood after all. My family held me back, so they had to be destroyed. It makes so much sense!_

Kirru would repay his family's sacrifice. He would keep the faith and believe until the Jedi came to find him. When the Knight arrived he would see what a gem of loyalty and endurance Kirru was, and he would take Kirru back to the Temple - where he had always been destined to be.

"You fool." Shadows swallowed the Prophet's face as he raised his hood once more, "By now your Jedi is dead, but even if he wasn't, you don't think they would come for _you_ do you? You are a nobody, child of non-entities. You are utterly unimportant to the Jedi, and your importance to me is...negotiable."

A light flashed on the grey steel curve of desk behind him and he turned away from the boy to sit in the smooth egg of his throne.

"You can serve me as my student or my slave. Either way, you will serve me."

Kirru was about to spit on the floor when the door opened and in swept a man of almost heroic magnificence.

Draped in a sweep of white robes, the man carried himself like a king. His face was ageless, smooth, with a masklike immobility which spoke of extensive surgery. The sculpted cheeks and almond eyes were an amalgam of holiness, so the very sight of his face stirred an involuntary urge to worship. Even the smooth dome of his shaved head - which made him look androgynous to Kirru - only increased his aura of otherworldliness. A third eye, open on his forehead, glittered with the fixed stare of a sapphire.

"Ah," said the Prophet, looking all the more like a withered spider, "Enlightened One. You have something to say?"

The Enlightened One folded his arms, hands clasping muscled biceps as if he was cold, or afraid.

 **Maybe you shouldn't anger this 'Prophet' any more,** Kirru's survival-trained persona suggested to him, impressed. **If young gods like this fear him, you might do better to be his ally.**

_The Prophet is my enemy._

**If you want to survive, sometimes you need to change sides.**

Kirru closed his eyes and banged his head against the wall, driving the hindmost thorn of his crown into the marble. Why was he thinking this now, when he'd just decided to wait for rescue? Why wouldn't his mind or body ever do exactly what he told them to do?

The skin covering the thorn split, and blood slid down the back of his neck. Even in the miasma of the Prophet's evil Kirru badly wanted to reach up and finger the sharp tip of bone - a sign that he was no longer a child. But he still could not move, hanging like a side of meat, his bare feet metres above the carpet.

The Enlightened One looked down and swallowed - humility obviously bitter in his mouth. "I have punished the acolytes responsible for letting this demon-child get free," he said, "Any further candidates will be restrained as well as drugged. I am...relieved to see you've dealt with him."

"Relieved?" The words slipped smooth and poisonous as mercury from beneath the dark hood. A chill wound through the air of the small room, as if a spirit walked. Unreasoning dread filled the Enlightened one's fine eyes. He had stepped into a place where nightmares came true. "You let the boy go, believing he could harm me?"

Before the Prophet, Kirru saw, no-one was strong. They stood like dreaming children, trapped in his gaze. Even the gods.

"As I say, those responsible have been punished."

Silence. Darkness deepened, as if the Prophet's will governed even light. In that shadowed place the white robes of the cult leader seemed an affront against nature. He shivered. The construct of his face was frozen in sincerity and wisdom, but fear rolled off him in an acrid stink.

"How?" said the Prophet at last, when it became clear his servant would not break from silence alone.

"Their throats were cut over the altar. Their bodies will be processed soon, to feed your...children."

If there was disapproval in that sentence, Kirru noticed, it had only been over the word 'children'. The Enlightened One's gaze had slithered over him as he spoke, making it clear he would rather have called Kirru an abomination than a child. In the brief glimpse of the man's eyes, Kirru saw a fanaticism at least as deep as the Prophet's evil. They were two of a kind, however dissimilar they looked, but the Prophet was greater.

 _I could be his student. I wouldn't have to be afraid any more. I would make the Galaxy fear me._ It was a heady thought, - how he'd make Jack and his crew squirm! A tremor went through him, as if he had touched the altar again, feeling a residue of its power, hatred, need. He thirsted for something - to hit, hurt, kill.

He felt rather than saw the Prophet's hood tip slightly in his direction, dim light slide across that satisfied smile. Eyes as grey as liquid nitrogen glimmered as they gazed at him.

 _He senses it!_ Kirru thought with a stab of disgust. _It's probably him, making me feel like this. He made the altar; he was using it against the Jedi, and now maybe against me._ No one had ever told Kirru what to think or feel. No one was going to start now. _Get out of my head, *sleemo!*_

It was a small victory when the gaze swung away. Vulture-like the cowled head turned from one prey to the other.

"But the performance of your weapon?" Unsubtly, the Enlightened One attempted to close the subject of Kirru's freedom, his sandalled feet shifting nervously on the cold floor. "You are pleased with the weapon?"

Nothing living, nothing flesh and blood should have been able to make a noise so full of elemental terror as the Prophet's hiss. The room was dark, and the inside of his throne shadowed, so it seemed he sat within concentric circles of doom, himself the singularity at their centre - the place from which no light could escape. "The weapon was unable to fully control a single Jedi."

"A Jedi Master, Lord. Surely you didn't expect..."

The Prophet stood. "I expect success." He raised his hand, the wrist looking severed by the black cuff.

"Prophet! Lord!" There was something a little obscene about watching this sculpted hero grovel, "Of course, whatever you expect is your right. Please...Eeeearrrghhh!"

Kirru's heart stuttered and stopped as lightning forked from the Prophet's bare hands and engulfed the abject god. The strobing, scalpel edged light seemed harsher and more terrible than darkness. It's stridor devoured the man's scream. The sight of him, evil though he was, jerking spastic as a newly-dead calf, made Kirru want to throw up. It was so like the way Jenju had died.

"Leave him alone!" he shouted.

The air filled with the smell of burning flesh. The Enlightened One's clothes were on fire. He tried to beat them out, but the electricity had chained his hands as effectively as fetters, making them shake, useless.

 _Lightning smells like hot iron,_ A calm voice in Kirru commentated, _It must be feel as if you're being beaten with branding tongs._

The prophet was looking at him sideways, like adults all over the universe. Waiting for something. Kirru swallowed his pride. Whatever it took, he could not let this go on. "Please?"

Blind in the sudden darkness which followed, he could hear the cult leader's gasping whines of pain, but not the footfalls. A hand caught his chin, fingernails digging into the flesh under his jaw. There was a crackle and sting as small sparks crawled from the fingers onto Kirru's face. A hooded menace, the Prophet's face pushed threateningly close to his own.

"Something you need to remember. You may not command, but you are allowed to beg."

"I don't beg!"

"You overestimate yourself."

Turning away, the Prophet arranged a stylus and datapad more neatly on his desk. As his underling scrabbled at the floor, he glided calmly back to the great steel throne. Silence filled the dimness, punctuated by wheezing, the hacking of the Enlightened one's breath as he tried to push himself up onto hands and knees. A sense of torment filled the very stillness - like the moment before torture begins.

"The weapon's power must be increased," said the soft, vile voice suddenly - shocking as the first crack of a whip. "You will intensify both the Ren sacrifice and the search for Force sensitive children."

With a great effort the Enlightened One nodded jerkily. He made three attempts to wipe the stream of mucus from his nose, finally succeeded. "Yes, Lord."

"And Jona?" Even half immobilized by lightning, the Enlightened Ones's masklike face flinched at hearing his own name, "You have a month. I will have the success I expect by then, or the Security Division will receive details of your prior identity. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Lord, I'll do it at once."

The press of another switch on the Prophet's gun-metal desk opened the door. Crawling, the Enlightened One shuffled out into the great temple of the Eye. Its brightness was a sham, Kirru knew, but he yearned for it. Even if light was only a thin gilding over the reality of evil he would rather have that pretence than the truth.

A hum and hiss of smooth servos filled his ears, taking him in a brutal flashback to the moment when he left Jack's ship; when his revenge had been snatched away. Uncomfortably he craned his head around and saw the droid with poisoned hands slide into the room. Its long, many jointed fingers reached up for Kirru's neck.

He had not meant to give the Prophet such satisfaction, but the freezing, oily touch of those hands was too much for him. "Leave me alone, damn you!" he cried out at last, ashamed of his childish voice and the edge of tears, utterly humiliated by the Prophet's slow smile, "Why can't you leave me alone?"

"Destiny, young Kirru. It's your destiny to join with me, though you can't see it yet."

He was crying like a girl now - exhaustion and the residue of drugs and beatings making him weak. _I'm not really like this, it's just happening to me._ He held the picture of the Jedi in his mind and told him this, hoping he would understand. _Please come soon. I'm so tired!_ "I'm *never* going to join you," he shouted, in a last futile gesture of defiance, "Never! I'll die first!"

The stranglehold of air which was holding him up unclenched, and he fell into the cruel metallic grip of the droid. Spent, he could not struggle with the thing's steel and piston strength.

"That is not one of your choices," said the smug cowled shape at the centre of his misery. "I'm going to put you to work now. When you give up this infantile rescue fantasy we will talk again."

 

* * *

 

"I think he's waking up," said a guttural voice above Kirru. Without opening his eyes he breathed in, testing the scents. Whatever they had given him this time had not clouded his mind - there was no pleasant belief that he might have woken from a nightmare. Nor had he expected comfort, but he found yet again that his imagination was not vivid enough to have prepared him for the stench.

Excrement, and vomit, and the pus-scent of infected wounds filled the air. Force abilities, which he had come to rely on in his many attempts at escape, filled his soul with a similar stink. Despair had a psychic touch more foul than the ordure.

"Here, drink this." An arm around his shoulders was pulling him upright, rubbing on the half healed sores where the Wookie had beaten him. Reluctantly he obeyed the call to consciousness. Looking up, he met the gaze of a pair of iridescent eyes and saw an ocean of loss almost as deep as his own.

The creature was absurdly shaped - the knob-knuckled hand which cradled the cup was clearly on the end of a leg. Arms held its frail, curved body off the ground. If someone had stretched the muzzle of a Tauntaun to twice its natural length, it might have had a face like this. In its embrace, Kirru had a flash of sympathy for the Enlightened One. Though the creature was cradling him gently, urging him to drink, it was hard to accept that such a thing could be sentient, let alone that it had actually _spoken_ to him.

**But when you are in a position of weakness, recruit allies.**

He took the cup of water - it was white as snowmelt, full of particles. It tasted both of life and of disease, but his parched body gulped it down gratefully and demanded more.

"More?"

The swamp-mottled head shook, its mobile ears each flicking independently forward and back. "Not until after."

"After what?" There was a golden thread between himself and this alien, Kirru saw, just as there had been with the feather-cloaked girl in the lobby. A promise of brightness, shared strength. But feather-cloak's rejection of him had hurt so much! He didn't need the extra anguish which reaching out might bring. Ignoring the offered light, he sealed himself inside his own soul. Though he would take allies, he would not attempt to have friends. Vulnerability only lead to suffering.

"You'll find out," it said quietly, picking up a blanket and draping it around his shoulders. Stiff with someone else's dirt, it caught on his wounds, but it was warm. "What's your name?"

Since the Prophet already knew, there was little point in trying to conceal it. "Kirru."

Absurd as the formalities were in a place like this, the thing touched its knuckles together in some kind of greeting ritual. "I'm Griogha. Welcome to the abyss."

Behind Griogha, another of his species lay on its back in a tangle of arachnid limbs. The room was a cube of metal, and the ceiling still gleamed, but rags and filthy blankets were scattered over the ground. Children lay everywhere, curled in foetal silence, or whimpering. A nine year old girl was rocking, her forehead impacting the wall with a maddening thud, irritating as drumming fingers. In the corner a Nikto child was smearing his own dung on the walls.

Every time Kirru believed there was no where left to fall, the universe opened up a new pit. _How can this be? How can they allow it to happen?_

But he knew now who 'they' were. 'They' were people like his father, busy somewhere else, or his mother, too weak to defend herself, or Jack - skimming the profits of exploitation. The whole galaxy, the whole universe colluded to let this happen, and no one cared.

The others' despair, foetid in the rank closeness of the prison, closed him about, until every heartbeat was a waste of energy. What was the point of fighting after all? No one cared about him, and there was nothing but darkness at the base of the world. Why not accept and master it, as the Prophet had?

_Because this is a test. A test of your endurance. If you pass, you *will* become a Knight._

He couldn't quite remember what the Jedi stood for any more, but he could not forget the dawnburst flowers. A power the colour of light. Just thinking of that living fountain made him feel cleaner.

"What is it?" Griogha's camel-nosed face pushed into Kirru's face. Had he felt the instant of revival? Could all these children feel what the others felt? If that was so, even the despair could be fought.

"I saw..." he began, when the squeal of rusted metal interrupted him. A wave of greater stillness went through the small crouched forms of the children. Part of the wall was lifting up. Ducking through the low doorway came men in biohazard gear, their faces covered with breathing masks, blaster rifles trained steadily on the faces of sleeping infants.

"Get up! One line, Now!"

"Please, Kirru." Griogha fell into line behind him, his strange feet twisted into fists, shoulders as muscled as hips giving him a rolling, drunken walk, "You know something. Have they made a mistake? Is there...good news?"

"Shut up back there! No talking."

Did they really think they could frighten him by _shouting_ , Kirru thought, after he had braved the Prophet's insidious threats? He had rested and drunk, and he felt stronger, more than up to a little defiance. Perhaps with hope these force sensitive children might be of use. _If they call all do what I can do, who knows what we can achieve together?_

He didn't really want to share what the Prophet called his 'rescue fantasy'. It was private, it belonged to him. But if he was going to train them into an army, to secure their revenge and escape, he had first to break their despair.

"Yes, Griogha," he whispered fervently, "It's good news. There's a Jedi coming for us. I saw him."

 

* * *

 

Between armed guards, under a bleak white ceiling, the long line of alien children shuffled along one clinical corridor to the next. Behind them, a cult-member followed, disinfecting their footsteps. The sharp medicinal smell of the spray was pleasant after their own filth, though Kirru knew it was the taint of his own inhumanity which was being cleansed.

He could track the progress of his news as it was murmured from child to child - could feel the eyes on him, as the messenger of such a blessing. Even the most catatonic of the infants walked straighter after hearing the rumour. Such a long time it had been, since he bestowed anything other than pain. It was good to bring healing, for a change.

The barren corridor ended in a single door. Inside, like a morgue arranged in some fit of whimsy, rows of clinical beds made a flower around stamens of wire.

A cloth of gold hanging formed the intrusion of another dimension on this medical pallor. One wall was little more than a curtain, and behind it Kirru could hear the muffled vastness of the Temple of the Eye. _We could cause chaos if we ran through there during a service._

Taped wisdom stamped hard on that conceit - as wasted effort - even as the guards lined up with their backs to the drape. Any attempt to escape that way would meet a sheet of blaster fire.

As if they'd done this many times before, the children lined up meekly, each in front of a couch. Men in biohazard gear strapped wrists and ankles to the platforms, covered them in wires.

Rough, impersonal hands now pushed Kirru forwards, forcing down on his shoulders. Their polyalloy gloves burnt his skin with pressure as they twisted him, laid him down _I'm not going to panic. They've all done this before. It will not kill me._ All he had to do was to endure, and keep the faith. How hard could it be?

"Aii!" When the wires touched his skin he screamed. Behind his oxygen mask the man sniggered at Kirru's cry, little realising the boy screamed not from denial but from recognition.

"Ancestors!" Laid bare to him, the machine sucked him in. His spirit was torn from him, pulled along the wires and fed into the morass and burning inferno of power that was the Altar. Leads funnelled in the other children's living Force, and a control circuit took all their accumulated strength and fed it through the coils Kirru had traced under the Temple floor. Wires which rose like spider thread out of the ground and into the shadow of the Prophet's throne.

There was a residue of new death on the Altar; the faint imprint of Biscuit, and even Nails. If he cared to he could just hear their voices, gibbering in the darkness inside his mind. Moss had grown, absorbing their blood, soaking up some part of their personalities. Now their terror was a thrill sawing in his own veins - so sharp it was almost delicious. "Oh! Oh..."

Oh this made sense. This was reality. Pain and horror and loss and cold and scalding anger. Yes, this was the truth. It tore him into pieces, and he let it - it felt so right.

For an uncounted time there was nothing in him but fury, spiralling in a vortex about the Altar. But then a mind slipped under his own, began to shape the whirlwind. Kirru felt himself being used - his own small connection to the Force being drawn on, a strength which was his by right usurped by the cold parasite of the Prophet's mind.

He was flying, dragged like a remora after a shark. A sense of speed - blurred images flashed past him, filling him with nausea. Beneath it all, the great red pulse of the Altar beat, a volcano of malice at the heart of his world.

Victims suggested themselves. Kirru struggled to keep his sense of self intact as the power on which he rode was split. Remembering the Eye - the Jedi tangled in dark threads - he realised what was happening. _I am one of the tendrils of his power. I am part of his strength._

There was a sense of prying something open, and then vision, surreal and brilliant. Kirru saw the slopes of a mountain - its peaks sharper and narrower than seemed possible, rising into a sky of pearl.

Sight swung dizzyingly - he was looking out of someone else's eyes, seeing a group of humans, in the loin cloths and feather cloaks of the Temple worshippers. Trying to look at his own host body, Kirru noticed sinewy brown arms, felt the weight of a blaster on his back and the slap of a scabbard against his thigh.

 **This body might be a useful tool.** It occurred to him that perhaps he could wrest control of the device from the Prophet. Could this group of men, who were even now scrambling onto swoops and STAPs, be turned from the mission on which they were now being sent and brought here to storm the monastery and set the children free?

Kirru concentrated hard on pulling his own consciousness back together, remembering who he was. He needed to plan, to work out how this machine was driven, to piece together an idea of the Prophet's weaknesses. Oh, it had been a mistake, connecting him to this sort of power. And he fully intended to exploit that mistake to the limit.

**Test your weapons before you commit to combat.**

A length of his host's dreadlocked hair fell into his eyes. Kirru tried to brush it away. His own hand jerked against its restraints, but the host did not move.

Their swoop gang had risen out of the damp warmth of the forests now and was flying full throttle along mountain roads of shale and scree. Danger was exhilarating, like playing a vid game, except that he could feel his host's fear and panicked struggle for control. If the swoop went over the cliff, that man would really die. It gave the experience so much more authenticity.

 _Can I persuade him to slow down?_ Kirru touched the man's fear this time, not trying to move the body directly, but mentioning firmly that he was going much too fast. The suggestion met with a jolt of surprise which almost sent them both off the road. _Damn!_ He had not meant to be so obvious. _Oh damn, this is a lot more difficult than it seems._

Alerted to his meddling, the Prophet's grip on him tightened suddenly, an embrace like an iron maiden's - piercing him in a hundred paces.

*You try my patience.* In his mind, without the kind mellowing of air, the voice was a thousand times more foul. He flinched, and the Prophet's spirit shredded him - as if it had pressed his face into a blender.

Someone screamed. He had no idea if it was himself or his host. He had no idea how to tell himself apart from the man. Surely his name _was_ Pak Okkifo, a settler from the valley with a monster on his back that he couldn't shake off?

He gunned the motor, screeching around the last hair thin path at the summit of the mountain, coming out onto a hidden plateau. Wind hit him in the chest with a smell of cloves. Over his head the sky was forbiddingly dark. Mountain walls disappeared into clouds and fume below him.

As he saw the small settlement of Rens, their spindly, untidy dwellings wedged into the crags, bridges of rope lashing in the turbulent air between them, his heart froze. What was he doing here? He had fields to plant, a garden to tend. Why...?

But then the monster in his head stirred again, and he was taking the blaster from his back, levelling it at the aliens' nesting place.

"Come on out!" It scared him so much to hear his own voice shout, against his will, without even knowing what it was going to say. What was happening to him?

From one of the nearer nests a Ren rose, like a being of legend. She was so beautiful, Pak thought, so delicate. Her span of speckled wings were petrochemical green at the tips. She had no weapons. Defenceless.

"They said you'd come here," the Ren's voice was harsh as a carrion bird's, "I didn't believe it. Why? What have we ever done to you?"

Pak's sympathy for the alien was so great he managed to struggle briefly with the poisonous will which held him pinned. In that heartbeat of resistance, Kirru woke again and pulled the seeping tatters of his self back together as if he was huddling into his ruined shirt.

Ancestors! This was familiar - the pirates, the woman innocently asking 'why?'. An image of his mother's death filled his nostrils with the smell of meat. He had not been able to stop it happening, but he was not going to stand by and watch it happen again.

 _Smash!_ doors splintered as the other riders kicked down the frail houses, dragging out women. The Rens were all women.

"Please," green-tip begged, going down on her knees, "This is a nursery. There are only mothers and eggs here." Her feathers ruffed with anxiety, "We can't possibly have anything you need."

Against the cliff a man was fighting to claw another female from her nest. "Please!" she was shouting, "My child is hatching. If he doesn't see me now he will _never_ know who his mother is. Please, just seconds...Coac, help me!"

Green-tip - Kirru believed Coac was her name - sprang into the air. With two beats of her powerful wings, the blast of which almost knocked Pak down, she had crossed the barren clearing and was diving on the other man, clawed feet outstretched to grab his blaster.

Kirru felt the movement go through Pak's form, felt the arms lift and level the blaster; shared the horror in what he was doing. _I won't let it happen. I won't!_

Pak's finger tightened on the trigger just as Kirru dove from hiding, seized the Altar's power and hammered it into Pak's mind.

There was a moment of great clarity. He watched the shot go astray. Coac tumbled over the edge of the mountain, soared again like an angel into the indigo sky. Confused men dropped blasters from nerveless fingers, just as the Rens leapt one by one into the air, ready to fight back.

Then Pak fell - unconscious from the mental blow, and Kirru was left naked in the spiritual pit of the Altar facing an anger more cutting than broken glass. He braced himself to meet the Prophet's punishment. It didn't matter. It didn't matter at all. He had saved a life. For the first time in weeks, he felt clean.


	14. Chapter 14

It was dark in Obi-Wan's windowless room, though light from the sitting room crept under the closed door. He lay and listened to his Master's movements: The tread which seemed too light for such a large man, distant whirr of sonic shower, muffled music, low conversation with the kitchen droid and a com-call, too soft for him to hear the words.

Melody, plaintiff and sweet, threaded through his awakening. There had been few mornings like this in his apprenticeship, and the room was no more familiar than any of the other thousand places he had slept since becoming a Padawan.

His thoughts drifted back to the kata session last night; moving over the worn floor, already scuffed and scorched by Qui-Gon's practice, into the centre of that lingering excitement and peace. His bow, and the smug smile, because he knew he was going to impress.

Obi-Wan slid his foot out into first guard, called the Force, preparing to leap into a high arc - to be the first comet.

"Hold!"

 _On the guard?!_ The smugness had left a sharp ache in his chest as it left. Why could he never get anything right for this man?

Blandly watchful, Qui-Gon's eyes had shown no disappointment as he came forward to minutely adjust the angle of Obi-Wan's back foot, and press the front knee slightly outwards. "Toes point the way you're going, or you lose power. And the twist should be in your hips, not the knee, or you'll damage the joint."

Fervently glad he had no other audience Obi-Wan had corrected, ruthlessly, silently, and started again. And again. Time narrowed into an eternal instant of concentration, measured only by gestures and an increasing tremble in his limbs. He still didn't know how long they'd spent, nit-picking the kata into atoms. All of that was subsumed and eclipsed by the sheer perfection of what he had achieved at the end.

Obi-Wan smiled in the twilight, reliving his own satisfaction, and the fleeting touch on his arm and warm 'Well trained' which were his Master's only words of praise.

He stretched, and his body protested, frozen by wear like a droid left out in the rain. Achievement and reconciliation were a sunlight at the edge of his mind, and he wanted to enjoy them, just for this one second. A woman's voice, soaring in song, and the smell of new bread insinuated themselves under his door.

This morning he had to decide who to betray.

A brush of awareness along the bond brought compassion and some distant sadness before Obi-Wan tightened his shields. So, Qui-Gon knew he was awake, knew too the dilemma he faced, and was giving him space to wrestle with it on his own.

 _Well then, there's no point hiding here any longer._ He got up, wincing as the muscles around his ribs protested, and the joints of wrist and elbow set up a thin throb. Making his bed prolonged the moment of peace, but too soon he was pushing open the door, heading for the fresher.

 _I should tell the Council he plans to disobey them._ If he told Yoda about his master's intentions it would display an emotional detachment and obedience to the Code worthy of a Jedi Apprentice. It was his duty, he knew it.

The common room was reeling with dancing pulses of light reflected from traffic and skyhooks glittering in dawn's multicoloured magnificence. Music filled the light, or the light filled the music, giving the cramped quarters a transcendence, as if they were floating in the Force.

 _Not exactly my choice,_ Obi-Wan thought, shutting the fresher door on the sound. It was too full of exaltation for his present mood.

Was it only his duty which made him want to inform on his Master's rebellion? Or was it a craven concern with his own status? He had been too close to a position in Agricorps, too troublesome in the recent past to believe himself safe now.

 _But why shouldn't that matter to me?_ he thought with a stab of renewed bitterness, _I'm entitled to seize my chance now..._ The anger sloughed off him under the shower, like dirt, _Now Master Jinn's given it to me._

The fact was that but for Qui-Gon he would be on Bandomeer right now. Yoda's regret had not plucked him off that filthy rock, nor had any of the Council demanded that Qui-Gon should come back for him when he left the Jedi on Melida/Daan. If he had a chance of knighthood at all it was because of Qui-Gon's haphazard loyalty.

 _"Maybe you should start thinking of him as a person, and not as your passport to knighthood."_ Pepi's words were as unsettling to him now as they had been among the stones. What place did personal relationships have in a Jedi's life, when the Code exhorted all to detachment? And yet it would feel so wrong to answer his Master's generosity with betrayal.

_Is it betrayal to make him act like a Jedi?_

_Is it your place to tell him what to do?_

Sighing, Obi-Wan shrugged on his tunics, folded the stola and laid them carefully over his shoulders, making sure the creases sat flat and even before winding sash and belt around them. Pulling the fabric tight he completed an armour of neatness - a defence against all the disapproving glances he would receive today. He could at least look the part.

_My master overcame some pretty ruthless inner demons to take me on. So what am I going to do to repay him?_

 

* * *

 

Long legs stretched under the table, Qui-Gon was cutting thick slices of new bread, spreading them with nut butter. Scents joined the dance of music and light, making Obi-Wan smile involuntarily, overwhelmed as a desert traveller in an oasis.

A bowl of dark chocolate steamed in the centre of the table, flecked with red and yellow spices. On the hotplate in the kitchen lay scrambled eggs and a brown, seeded loaf hacked into great slabs of toast.

"Wow!" For a second the moral dilemma could be pushed to a corner of his mind, as he contemplated a breakfast that seemed almost too luxurious to be allowed. Sitting down, he ladled hot, bitter chocolate into his own bowl and marvelled. "In the Initiate's refectory they make us have oatmeal."

Qui-Gon gave him a grimace of recognition, eloquent enough to make him laugh. Since the Initiate level refectory had not been reprogrammed for over a hundred years, his master must have experienced that unsweetened porridge for himself.

"I like to eat when I'm here," said Qui-Gon, without apology. He nudged the pot of butter towards his apprentice, "You never know otherwise where the next meal's coming from."

So he was fortifying himself for the forbidden mission. Obi-Wan's problem was written even in the food this morning. He dunked a slice of buttered bread into his chocolate and bit the end off before it dissolved. _Do I tell Master Yoda his plans, and make him stay here? Or do I go with him?_

Once before he had faced a similar decision. But the mission to Telos had not been expressly forbidden, merely disapproved of. Obi-Wan had felt no disloyalty to the Council in following Qui-Gon then. This was different. This was overt defiance. The punishment would be severe.

 _If I told them, I would be protecting my Master from the consequences of his own recklessness._ He had heard the whispers in the corridors - how Jinn was strong enough and talented enough to be on the Council, but his rebellion held him back. _He shouldn't always be fighting them - he should be one of them._

The rationalisation was tenuous at best, and did not make the feeling of guilt go away.

Oh, Force! He hated not knowing what to do. It wasn't _fair_ that this decision should rest with him. It wasn't _fair_ of Qui-Gon to put this kind of pressure on him. _You're supposed to tell me what to *do* Master! You're not supposed to make it difficult for me._

Qui-Gon put down a bitten slice of toast, wiped his fingers on his trousers and passed Obi-Wan a datapad. The bright lines of text were heavy in his hand, and he looked at them without comprehension.

"Those are the courses of study I'd like you to take while I'm gone. The psychology of groups in warfare in particular is very..."

"You're going without me?!"

The option was so ludicrous it had never occurred to him. Like touching dry ice, so cold it burnt, Obi-Wan was unable to say what he felt - whether it was fury or an insane laughter. "You're leaving me behind _again_?!"

Of course - it should have been obvious! Any excuse to dump the unwanted student. Why had he ever thought yesterday's talk would make a difference?

"Obi-Wan, what kind of a monster do you think I am?" Qui-Gon drew himself up, his posture alert but not intimidating, his face nothing more than curious.

 _Trust._ Obi-Wan reminded himself firmly, battling the welling up of years of insecurity, the certainty that the whole Temple was only awaiting an excuse to get rid of him. _I promised myself I was going to trust him._

"If I order you to stay, you will have broken no vow. You can follow my orders _and_ those of the Council." Qui-Gon's hand counted off points against the tabletop - even his gestures gentle. "You won't receive a reprimand, you won't be punished, your status will be secure, and I will not have forced you to come on a mission you do not believe in."

And again, it hadn't been what he feared at all. Obi-Wan drew a huge breath, flavoured with chocolate. _Not because he didn't want me, but because he's trying to protect me from what he has to do._ In the aftermath of shock and reassurance, his own priorities settled themselves without thinking. Relief was a euphoria as wild as the music.

"I may not believe in the mission, Master, but I do believe in you. I want to come with you. I want to learn what _you_ have to teach."

Qui-Gon's eyes widened in a look of stunned vulnerability, strange on his battlescarred face. There was a full minute of silence, coloured with strained and uncomfortable joy, before he recovered his serene smile.

 _I really got him that time,_ Obi-Wan thought in triumph. His appetite returned a hundredfold. He filled his plate with scrambled eggs and toast almost as a celebration. _I really touched him. Maybe Master Oser's right after all!_

"So where do we start?" he said, "How do we get a spaceship, when we don't have any money?"

 

* * *

 

Second-hand sunshine, reflected from a window far outside, filled the hangar with touches of saffron. "I've never seen so much junk in one place," Obi-Wan muttered as he trailed at his Master's elbow across the stained durasteel floor, "We've come to relocate some Jawas?"

Secretly he was a little thrilled to be so close to so many classic ships. _They've even got a Mobquet 'Cloakblade' with the TCL sub-frequency shields...but the gunports are wrong._ He craned his head to examine them, the desire to look like an impeccable Jedi warring with curiosity. Was that a series he hadn't heard about, or just an illegal modification?

Without warning, Qui-Gon turned and caught him gawking. He didn't know if it was his joke, or some inner humour of Qui-Gon's which warmed the ice-blue gaze that settled on him then. He made a mental effort to remember that he wasn't being laughed at.

"You want to explore, Obi-Wan?"

"Would it be appropriate?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he cursed himself. Damn! Did that sound like criticism? As if he was second guessing his Master? After the brothel incident, he knew how much Qui-Gon hated that.

"We're no longer acting in an official capacity, Obi-Wan, and I'm looking for a friend. Consider this..."

Accustomed to the Masters at the Temple, for whom everything was a lesson, Obi-Wan just _knew_ the sentence would end 'Consider this a test', and wondered what he was being examined for this time. So it shocked him briefly to hear his master conclude "A chance to relax."

What that had to do with being a Jedi, he didn't know, but there was still the question of those gunports. "Thankyou Master." He bowed and ran back to peer more closely at the Cloakblade before Qui-Gon could change his mind.

Mobquet designs were so beautiful. From directly below the Cloakblade curved in a silver smoothness which seemed to capture the joy of flight. Along its winglike sweep the weapon ports had been modified with the painstaking care of an artist, until it was hard to believe they were not part of the original design. They so much should have been.

Breathing deep with appreciation and awe, Obi-Wan wandered among grounded spaceships. They loomed in the light and their own shadow like fallen giants, morbid and eerie with their broken backs and exposed guts. Warming air was filled with an olfactory syrup of grease, insulation, and the thin indefinable strangeness which was the smell of deep space.

Distant, framed in the vulnerability of dismembered machines, a figure surrounded by fireworks welded a torn bulkhead. The sight of such industry made Obi-Wan feel guilty. Why was he wasting time when a child's life was at stake?

He shook off the allure of model numbers and liveries, made his way around the unbelievable presence of a small Ithorian Cloud Village, and ghosted to his Master's side once more, ready to get on with the mission at once.

Qui-Gon was crouched beside a veteran speeder. Arm propped on the door, he passed a spanner to the man underneath - a hand in surgeon's gloves reaching out to clasp it. A voice, tinny and hollow from the depths of the engine, was saying "...and Naptali's number four husband died about three weeks ago."

Qui-Gon propped his chin against his forearm, welcoming Obi-Wan back with a sideways slide of the eyes and small smile. "Was she very upset?"

"Nah. Couldn't replace him fast enough. Nnnh! Hand me the seven eighths ratchet would you?"

Ill at ease with this pointless chit chat, Obi-Wan breathed in, anchoring himself in this time, and out, accepting awareness of the moment. Master Jinn didn't look impatient, after all. He looked... Oddly enough he looked at home.

In the Temple Qui-Gon walked straighter, head high, as if he flouted a hundred disapproving glances with each footstep. Obi-Wan had admired the calm dignity with which he treated other Jedi, the pomp and rank he wore like his cloak. Here he had shed all of that. But for the clothes Obi-Wan wasn't sure he could have told his master from any other mechanic. He found it unsettling. Like negotiating with his own killers on Nimgon, Obi-Wan felt his master picked some strange places in which to relax.

"Nnh...ugh! Good, that's done." With a practised squirm a large man emerged from beneath the speeder. Coveralls, which must once have been blue, were slightly tight over the beginnings of a paunch. His blond hair was liberally peppered with dirt, and grease had settled in the laughter lines around his eyes, tattooing him with the marks of good humour. The eyes which settled on Obi-Wan were indigo, full of surprise. "You've got news yourself, Kai?"

"News and a request, Chen. I need your help."

The man's head raised like a _stava_ scenting prey. His wary eyes narrowed. "Urgent?"

"Yes."

Peeling off the gloves, letting them fall to lie like distended spiders on the hangar floor, Chen strode away. "Come and have breakfast, we'll talk."

On the far side of the hangar solar collectors bathed an unlikely garden. Shallow trays bore alpine flowers and hardy, wax-leaved plants content to grow even in the heavy vapour which flowed sluggishly across the floor. Larger containers held taller plants - tigaspikes, buttercups, the faintly luminous _Harmosa Nisii_ of Raaltiir, and a stand of elegant whispering grass from the meadows of Alderaan.

Obi-Wan recognised several medicinal species from xenobotany classes. There was a veritable gene-bank here. As he turned a corner of the wandering path he found himself surrounded by an air strange for Coruscant - ancient but paradoxically young - the dirt and sweetness of forgotten soil. Sunshine was warm on his bare neck. Looking back he saw mirrors filled with sky, and for an instant he was standing weightless in a garden at the edge of the world.

Then an angle grinder started up, shredding the illusion. Behind the mirrors someone swore inventively. "Chen? Where are you?"

"Go ahead." The blond man turned back, "Sounds like I've got an emergency of my own. Give me a second to get it sorted."

Obligingly, Obi-Wan stepped up to the door. It didn't move. He reminded himself about tact and acceptance, and flapped a hand over the sensor, but it was locked.

"Let me." Qui-Gon leaned over his head and placed his palm on the lockplate. There was a silence between them as the device scanned his fingerprints with amber light. Then the door slid open, betraying an intimacy with this place far beyond the realms of usefulness. _The door is keyed to him? Why?_ Curiosity alert, Obi-Wan ducked under the outstretched arm and went in.

Disappointingly there was nothing more interesting inside than a small family apartment.

Little bigger than their rooms at the Temple, a bed was folded up into one wall, and above his head another dangled from carbon cable. More plants crowded the corners like gossiping neighbours, framing an archway and cluttered kitchen. Beyond the dirty crockery stood a strip of light where disembodied colours twisted as if in some slow lightsabre kata. What in the Core was that?

Sprawled across the floor lay a teenage boy, head obscured by the virtual reality mask which was his schoolroom. In the coms alcove a little girl with bright green hair played an educational holovid.

Coming past Obi-Wan into the room, Qui-Gon knelt down at the girl's side, his face reflected in the view screen of her game. Squealing, she dropped the console and flung herself on him, locking small hands around his neck.

Bemused, and somewhat disapproving, Obi-Wan watched as his master stood - the infant still clinging to him - and tried to pluck her off, stola coming untucked as she resisted with all her strength. As soon as he had pried a hand away the other would latch firmly back on him as she threw her weight into what was obviously a familiar game.

The sense of an established tradition nagged at the Padawan unpleasantly, and he did not like the open enjoyment on Qui-Gon's face. Jedi should not act like this. Jedi did not seek entanglement with the world. That way lay divided loyalties, hostages to fortune, opportunities for blackmail. This open affection was ...almost as unwise as the whole mission.

At last the girl escalated her tactics, grabbing a handful of Qui-Gon's hair, pulling the tie to one side so a length fell in his eyes. "Oh, that's cheating!" the Jedi Master exclaimed, fixing her with a look of devilment which made her burst out laughing in anticipation. Then he tickled the bared ribs with anatomical precision. She shrieked again, face red with mirth, and drove both of her knees into his stomach.

"You hurt me!"

Qui-Gon's fake shock was enough to make her bounce in his arms crowing "I won. I won!" She stared at Obi-Wan with strange lilac eyes. "I _always_ win."

It really wasn't right, Obi-Wan thought, as the boy emerged from his virtual cocoon to imprison the flail of his sister's elbows and some part of Qui-Gon's back in a hug of quiet pleasure. _There is no emotion, there is serenity,_ yet the room was full of enjoyment, as multicoloured as the unexplained light along the corridor.

Was this some sort of test?

"Buki," Qui-Gon smiled at the boy, then bent to deposit the girl unceremoniously on the mat, "And Mairiah, this is Obi-Wan, my new apprentice."

Since they were important in some unspecified way to his Master, Obi-Wan slid his hands into his sleeves and gave them a small bow, determined that he at least would act like a Jedi. Mairiah grinned at him briefly. Buki straightened and wiped a hand through his piebald hair - oak blond streaked with blue - before holding it out in a gesture of forced politeness.

The boy was a lightweight, Obi-Wan thought, taking the hand reluctantly. About his own age, tall, gangly and with an air of otherworldly innocence, his handshake was nervous and he eyed the Padawan as if Obi-Wan's mere existence was a threat.

 _I'm not the problem. You are._ Obi-Wan thought with an upswelling of protectiveness so fierce it surprised him. He understood instantly that the family's welcome constituted a threat to Master Jinn's very existence as a Jedi. Obi-Wan did not want to see Qui-Gon fall prey to the dangers of their love. He wanted to hurry him out of this place, back to his true path, before he forgot who he was; before he forgot he had an apprentice at all.

"Saved any interesting planets recently?" A woman had emerged from the area of light beyond the kitchen and now leaned against the archway, arms folded, face glad. It was obvious where the children got their colouring - her plaited hair was many shades of blue and her skin the iridescent white of pearl. Small green scales fanned over her cheekbones and glinted as she grinned.

"A few." Qui-Gon stepped close to take her hands. "You've kept this one together while I've been away?" He smiled down on her.

"Just about," she said, laughing. The clasped hands lingered, Obi-Wan thought, rather longer than was strictly necessary. He permitted himself a frustrated sigh.

Chen came in, and Obi-Wan suffered another introduction with as much grace as he could muster. Behind the adults' politenesses was a certain wariness of him, as if once again the spectre of Xanatos preceded him. He wondered how long they'd known his Master, and if he had to compete with Pepi in their eyes also. When would this be over, so they could get on with the mission?

"So," said Chen at last, when they had refused breakfast and accepted mugs of tea, "What can we do for you?"

"Do you have a working ship we can borrow?"

Chen's pleasant face furrowed, and he dug around in the sofa cushions for a datapad. "You getting in trouble again, Kai?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

"And dragging the boy into it?"

"It's a kidnapped child, about Buki's age. I've been ordered to let it go, but..." Qui-Gon spread his hands to indicate how helpless he was to obey, and they nodded, understanding. "As for Obi-Wan, he volunteered."

All three of them smiled at him. He had never been the focus of so much approval before. It seemed a shame that it should happen in a place where he felt his master's judgement was impaired.

"Chuuba!" Chen swore, setting datapad and caf mug down simultaneously, "I can't have one ready this week. Not earlier than ten days."

"That's too long." Qui-Gon looked down at Mairiah who had positioned herself on his knee and was now pulling at his tunic. "We need to get to Skip 5 by tomorrow. How about one of your contacts?...What is it May?"

"Where's my present?"

 _Contacts?_ Obi-Wan wondered. Chen's sidelong glance at him was not reassuring. _And presents?_ However eccentric his master might be he would not spend Jedi money on 'presents', surely? That would be totally inappropriate from a man whose every expenditure had to pass scrutiny by Temple Auditors.

"They're not going to want to take Jedi, Kai."

"Then we won't be Jedi."

"Give me a moment."

Chen disappeared into the small com alcove. The sound of privacy shields clicking into place was an admission of guilt. Who else could his contacts be on a journey to Skip 5 but smugglers and criminals? Again, Master Jinn's level of comfort with this appeared to Obi-Wan to be too high. He seemed to have a habit of picking up undesirables and not putting them down again even when it was safe to do so.

The woman, Amarah, refilled the mugs and brought out prepackaged muja muffins from the cooler - she was obviously no cook - then stood at Qui-Gon's shoulder to frown in false sternness over her daughter's greed.

"Ah, the present." Qui-Gon reached into the inner pocket of his tunic and brought something out. "Hold out your hand." He covered the five-year-old's palm with his own, her whole forearm disappearing beneath his fingers.

"Spiky!" she exclaimed and revealed, like a conjuror, a pale yellow seed the size of an almond. "What is it?"

"If Buki can make it grow it will be a Madderly vine."

The boy scraped back his chair, stumbled, ran his knee into the table leg and lurched for a datapad, all with an expression of demented anticipation. Obi-Wan drew himself together as if his body subconsiously wanted to distance itself from such clumsiness.

"Look here." Buki held the data entry for Mairia to see, showing her the indigo and gold flowers. "And it smells, Kai?"

"Yes," Qui-Gon smiled at their eagerness, "Bittersweet. A refreshing smell.

"I'll train it over the door then," Buki enthused, "So we can walk in and out through scent." He caught himself, his pale face and water-blue eyes flicking from inspired to apologetic in an instant. "May I?"

"Of course!" said his mother, "The garden is yours, but will it have enough soil in that pot by the door?"

They launched into a conversation which reminded Obi-Wan painfully of his stint in Agricorps. He felt half relieved, half jealous. No financial impropriety then, but the seed must have come from the vine which grew on the Governor's palace on Nimgon. In the middle of a mission with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon had been thinking about this family. It didn't help that Buki had received the gift with all the delight Obi-Wan had so conspicuously failed to exhibit over his river stone.

_Trust, remember?_

Buki could not follow where they were to go. And once away from here, Obi-Wan would ask about all of this. Perhaps, like the abandonment this morning, it would bear another face once Qui-Gon had explained it.

He ate the rather soggy muffin in silence, drank his tea while they waited for Chen's 'contacts', and tried not to sigh again too loudly or too often.

 

* * *

 

Weather control had said it would rain, Qui-Gon thought, uncomfortably conscious of the weight of the blaster at his hip, holster strap around his thigh unfamiliar and irritating as he knelt to meditate. And it was raining. It was hard not to feel as if the predictability took some of the joy from the experience.

Still it was beautiful. Through the common room's narrow window he could see many different shades of white and grey. Traffic's turbulence was written in ghost shapes amid the steam and fume. The sound of water against the glass was the sound of empty peace; melancholy and calm.

To the music of rain he unravelled his signature in the Force, hid it between the lines of sentient static and the many small presences in air and water. There was no sense of coming apart - if anything he felt more aware of the immediacy of himself and of the world. He knew he had succeeded only when Obi-Wan came running into the room with a look of panic.

"Oh, I..." the boy skidded to a halt - his face all roundness; open eyes, open mouth.

"I wasn't leaving without you."

"But I can't..." The unguarded moment passed quickly, Obi-Wan straightened his posture, pulled his jacket taut and smoothed his face into an expression of faint suspicion. "I can't feel your presence in the Force. It's like you're not Force sensitive at all."

"I promised Chen not to be a Jedi."

"Hiding like that," Obi-Wan looked down, vertical line between his eyebrows, head slanted away from Qui-Gon, so he didn't have to look up and show the mistrust. "It's a Sith trick...isn't it?"

 _"But, Master, isn't that a Sith technique?"_ Qui-Gon's own question came back to him on a flood of empathic memory - so like this scene that it seemed to defy time.

He saw himself, slender and over-tall, sitting on the windowledge, big feet wedged into the jamb, a datapad in his lap, a spaceship - all chrome lines - rising out of the smog by his shoulder and floating into the pale sky.

"Is a lightsabre blade good or evil?" His master had been making tea at the time, and the question rolled out quiet and subtle as the steam. Quellingly elegant, Master Dooku blended herbs with the delicacy of a sorcerer. When Qui-Gon received the fine porcelain cup he always felt - with boyish reverence - that he'd been handed something magical.

"Neither, Master. Its use determines its morality."

A laugh, and the gesture of one white hand. "So."

Obi-Wan had stepped back a pace, his nondescript jacket and cut-down cargo-pusher's trousers incongruous against his Jedi dignity. He looked closed and unhappy, as he had done since meeting Amarah's family. The gesture Qui-Gon had intended to make him feel included, he seemed to have taken as a threat.

 _'The kid doesn't do subtle,'_ he remembered. On this question it would be best to be obvious. "There's nothing intrinsically evil in the technique, Padawan, no matter who has used it before. Sometimes it can save your life being hidden, being overlooked. I intend to teach you this as soon as we get on our ship."

Obi-Wan looked uncomfortable, but accepted the idea with a small nod. "I can't get this fixed on." He held out the telepathic dampener Qui-Gon had given him. A small cylinder of indigo metal with the shape of a hunting bird incised on the top, the dampener would prevent natural telepaths from sensing either Obi-Wan's thoughts or his obvious Jedi-trained shielding.

Qui-Gon pressed the device to his Padawan's earlobe, "Relax," activated it - tiny claws opened and dug into the flesh. Obi-Wan breathed in, and out. "There."

With his braid unravelled and brushed back into his ponytail, the earring glinting blue at the angle of his jaw Obi-Wan looked harder, older. There was something in his air of self-possession, in the bold glance which reminded Qui-Gon painfully of Xan - the last person to have worn those clothes. He didn't feel it would be helpful to say so.

Tucking his lightsabre into one of the pouches at his belt, he watched as Obi-Wan zipped his into a trouser pocket. "Let's go."

 

* * *

 

A neon sign oozed strident colour over the mold-black passage. Through the thin walls of a tower where sunlight had not penetrated for a millennium, Qui-Gon could hear voices shrieking, feel a hundred repeated patterns of misery. The rest of this block was immigrant housing, and the very stones seemed drip hopelessness. It had been a long time since it was wise to come to the Capital to make one's fortune, but the legends persisted, misleading the foolish and desperate of the whole galaxy into traps like this.

He sighed, letting the sadness flow out of him on a steaming breath. _I can do nothing now. And later is in the hands of the Force._ Pushing open the malfunctioning door he noticed that Obi-Wan was unusually close, his eyes only half aware, pondering something. He took the boy's arm and gave him a little shake. "Attention to the moment..."

"Gives knowledge." A quick bob of his head, the frown lines eased. Qui-Gon understood the reaction of relief at hearing a familiar Jedi phrase - this play acting was clearly against Obi-Wan's nature. He was too...straightforward...to enjoy the element of 'lets pretend'. "Sorry, Master."

"Ben..." he cautioned.

"Damn," the flinch of distaste was obvious, as pink and yellow light made an art deco statue of the boy's fine features, his eyes clouded hazel in the play of tones, "Sorry, Kai."

Something was on Obi-Wan's mind. Qui-Gon plunged into the smoke and steam of the 'Pillow Book' less than optimally aware himself. This time he would deal with it at once.

The bar was packed - in the smoggy half-light faces drifted into focus mirage-like: the snaking muscularity of a young Hutt, curved over a sabacc table; the sharp muzzle and eyes of a Bothan alone with her datapad; a Zabrak and a Codru-Ji in an arm-wrestling contest, surrounded by quiet, intent spectators.

Burnt sweetblossom was the smell - even the used smoke still carrying faint chemical reassurance, an easing of responsibility, the molecular compulsion to relax.

"What can I get you?" The barkeep was a bleached blonde with pale, assessing eyes.

"Jegleth."

"The kid too?" She gave Obi-Wan a look of faint condemnation, and set down the shots of blue liquid on the scratched counter with a click which spoke volumes. _Twilight in many things,_ he thought, warming to her. He had been in few other smuggler's dens where the patron disapproved of underage drinking. This seemed to be a nice place.

"I'm looking for Spes Kuckunniwi."

Her surge of fear was an adrenaline spike through the pleasant mist. "I don't know him." Holding Qui-Gon's gaze with dishonest bravado, she tried to distract him as her left hand dipped unobtrusively below the counter.

"We're not trouble. We're his fare."

"Yeah, right," the words were unconvinced, but the hand returned to the tabletop, jewelled nails shivering with light, "Like I say, I don't know him. Take a seat and if he comes asking for you, I'll send him over."

Obi-Wan gazed at the tumbler of Jegleth with something of the same horrified awe he had shown in front of the Prowlers, but he remembered to invoke the privacy screen before saying. "I don't really have to drink this do I?"

"Sip sometimes, and we'll hope he arrives soon."

Some tension or propriety eased between them - and suddenly Obi-Wan was grinning. "You know M...Kai, I think you're a bad influence on me."

It was like the first breath after cryo-sleep; a disproportionate relief. He sipped his own drink around an answering smile. "I certainly hope so."

Qui-Gon pushed the table away with a foot, so that he would not be trapped behind it if it came to a fight. Evidently their pilot was in some sort of difficulty, and it was best to be prepared. Leaning back against the wall - it was unpleasantly moist against his bared shoulders - he put his feet up and scanned the crowd. "Are you going to tell me what I've done to worry you this time?"

Obi-Wan sipped. His eyes widened and his face froze. Qui-Gon watched the learned breathing patterns come into play as the boy dissipated the alcohol, forced himself not to cough. He nodded with approval. That had been well handled.

"It's..." Obi-Wan cleared his throat, "Chen's family."

_Oh._

"You seem so...attached." Testing the stickiness of the stains on the tabletop, Obi-Wan managed to look embarrassed, as if he had said something obscene.

"'A Jedi shall not know love'?"

"Yes."

Around one of the back rooms a sense of furtive movement caught his attention. Someone's gaze was touching the side of his face like distant heat. That would be Spes, checking them out. Drinking a little, relishing the smooth wormwood tartness and honey aftertaste, Qui-Gon smiled, a little sad.

"Yet we must love _something_ if the sacrifice of our lives is to be endured. After all, why do we do it? Why do _you,_ do it, Obi-Wan? Why do you want to be a Jedi at all?"

"Um," Obi-Wan's floored expression told him that he had asked something as nonsensical as 'why do you want to be human?' It was not an issue for the boy. He simply _was_ Jedi, without thinking. "To serve the Republic?"

"And what is the Republic?"

"It's a political system based on..."

"You'd willingly dedicate your life to the service of a political system?"

Qui-Gon had seen that expression on his own face frequently in those terrible years under Yoda's tutelage - before his Master had rescued him. The utter, abased cluelessness of it moved him to pity.

"Obi-Wan, to me the Republic is nothing more than the state of peace which allows families like Amarah's to exist. Sometimes, if I have an argument with the Council, and I wonder why I don't just hand in my sabre and leave, _they_ provide my inspiration to stay. It is for them, and all the millions of people like them - not for some political structure - that the Jedi exist. If we don't know what we're fighting for, how are we to know when we've won?"

Obi-Wan looked up uncertainly, "They're your inspiration?"

"Yes."

"Your friends strengthen your dedication to the Jedi life. They don't weaken it."

The translation lacked the nuances of the original, but Obi-Wan had years ahead of him in which to develop depth. Touched by the amount of effort Obi-Wan seemed to have made trying to understand him, Qui-Gon leaned over and ruffled the boy's hair. "They could be your friends too."

As he placed his hand back on the grubby table a wave of Force-warning seemed to hit the fingertips - travel like an arcing current through his body, imprinting the moment on him - everything in the room stark as if lit by lightning.

A door opening behind the bar; the tentative footsteps of a slender Duros pilot - heading towards them.

Stir of small movements at scattered tables: A man putting down his cards, the bunch and tension of the Hutt's tail as she prepared to surge forward - each little warning a mark like blood on snow.

Obi-Wan's face cleared as if his puzzlement had been a mask over some essential purity, but the expression furrowed slightly as his hand found the vibroblade in the place of his sabre. He started to rise and Qui-Gon took his wrist to hold him down. "Patience. Let them come to us."

He left unsaid the implications of blaster fire in this place - stray shots, escalation, carnage. Better to encourage a more personal risk.

Nonchalance became an exercise in self restraint. The Hutt was closer. Two humans were casually threading between betting circles, hands inside their jackets. The Codru-Ji had palmed small weapons in each of his four hands. The urge to get away from the wall was irrational, but strong.

Obeying it, nodding to Obi-Wan to follow, Qui-Gon rose and strode forward to meet the Duros. Like a fawn greeting a lion - enormous eyes skittish, slender limbs poised for flight - the pilot said "Are you Chen's friend?"

"I'm Djinn Kai. This is my son, Ben," the words caught in his throat. Warning crested - it was a torment not to reach for his lightsabre. "You're in danger, we must go now."

"You're not going anywhere Kuk."

Between them and the wall, the Hutt whiplashed, her small hands cupped around an assassin's laser. _Stupid to expose your back,_ Qui-Gon told himself fiercely, _Now we're surrounded. What were you thinking?_ Trained though they were, sometimes his instincts led him astray. But they'd rarely been so suicidal before.

Time for self-doubt when they had survived this. Qui-Gon could feel the mouths of the Codru-Ji's four blasters like small spots of cold, two on Spes, one on Obi-Wan, one on himself.

It was a human who had spoken, scarred and armoured from a lifetime of streetfighting, his hands were busy with a monofilament wire - twisting it, making the unfeelable sharpness slice the light in menacing beauty. _A gloater,_ Qui-Gon thought, feeling the sharp rankness of the other man's mind like an odour, _He won't listen, whatever I say._

"I haven't done anything wrong." Spes protested - the claim itself establishing him as genuinely naive, "I don't understand what you want from me."

"Way I heard it you'd been smuggling seeds to Bakura."

With a touch on the arm Qui-Gon turned his apprentice to face him. //Can you take the Codru-Ji?//

"Wild seeds. Non patented seeds."

//He has _four blasters_ Master!//

"Undercutting LifeCorps profits. Depriving them of their rightful royalties."

//A good kick to the head and he won't be able to use any of them.//

It was a lot to ask, he knew. Whatever Obi-Wan did would have to be both instant and final, because the minute it happened Qui-Gon would have to find some way to disable the other three without allowing Spes to come to harm. Yet Obi-Wan had fought a flock of draigons - he was capable of this.

"LifeCorps were starving those people - making them pay a fortune for the seed of basic food crops, over and over."

"Sounds like our confession, boys." Scar tissue parodied the man's hard smile - mocking echoes on his cheeks. His teeth were very yellow. Wire swung glimmering from his hand, and Spes cried out - his sleeve and the skin of his forearm falling in a slice like a red leaf of autumn. "Stinking do-gooder. You gonna get paid now."

Watching the little pilot clutch his arm, Qui-Gon's patience ran out. Perhaps because he had stood so passively til now the bounty hunter was taken by surprise as he lunged forward, clamped his hand around the gloved wrist - stilling the wire - and slammed his elbow into the pressure point beneath the jaw.

As the body sagged against him he was already turning, - a moment of bliss as the perfect movement took him - limp form of his enemy held like a shield against him. He could see the shape of the battle now - the necessary places to be - and the energy of it buoyed him.

Distantly aware of shouts, upturning chairs, drinks sliding to shatter on the floor as fleeing forms crowded away he threw the body at the second human, fouling the man's shot. Behind him the focused point of white light which was Obi-Wan's presence in his mind had blossomed. Determination and joy coloured the bond between them.

By the time his opponent's blaster came up for a second shot, Qui-Gon had covered the distance between them. A feinted punch to the face disguised the sweep as he hooked the man's legs out from under him. Yellow fire seared Qui-Gon's shoulder as - falling - the man squeezed off a stray shot.

Pain turned the euphoria into something darker. A flash of panic sounded in his mind, and then silence fell from Obi-Wan. _Padawan!_

Kicking the fallen man in the throat with carefully judged brutality, Qui-Gon bent briefly to make sure he was really unconscious. As he did so something slid beneath his hair. Round, cold, making his hackles rise.

He straightened, turned. The blaster's muzzle did not leave his skin.

"I'm sure you're fast enough to break this wrist before I fire." The Codru-Ji was bleeding from a gash only micrometers from his jugular. _*Just* off._ Qui-Gon noted with some asperity, _Why is it always the smallest mistakes that get us killed?_ "But not all three of the others."

"That's true." He looked for Obi-Wan, found him pinned under the Hutt's tail - only an open hand and hedgehog brush of ginger hair visible beneath the flesh. _Not dead,_ Qui-Gon relaxed a little, _Yet._

He swallowed, Adam's apple grazing against the push of deadly metal. _However, I have been in better situations._ And then he felt it - the other presence he'd been expecting. Outside. Too far away to get here before a blaster bolt. He had to keep the man talking long enough for her to arrive. He had to exercise some Jedi confidence.

"I suggest that you and your associates let us go at once, or I will not be held responsible for the consequences."

The narrowness of its face around its fanged smile showed its Wyrwolf heritage briefly - the animal of its childhood. Its laugh was the snarl of a beast about to pounce, and Qui-Gon knew with beautiful clarity, that time had run out.

"Nice last words," said the Codru-Ji, "Very ironic."

It pulled the trigger.


End file.
